​Today in Wheeling History: August 24 — The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer is founded, beginning publication as West Virginia’s oldest continuously operating newspaper (1852).
 
The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer was founded on August 24, 1852, when its first issue appeared in print in what was then Wheeling, Virginia. Established by Eli B. Swearingen and Oliver Taylor, the paper was unusual for its era because it launched directly as a daily, reflecting Wheeling’s growing importance as an Ohio River and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad hub. Early editor J. H. Pendleton helped shape its initial political tone, but the paper’s most significant evolution began in 1856 when Archibald W. Campbell and John F. McDermot purchased it. Campbell modernized operations, expanded telegraph coverage, and strengthened its Republican editorial stance.
 
Another key figure in the paper’s development was John Frew, who joined the Intelligencer in the post–Civil War period and became one of its most influential publishers. Frew guided the paper through late‑19th‑century modernization, expanded its commercial reach, and helped solidify its reputation as a leading voice in the Ohio Valley. Under his leadership, the Intelligencer continued its tradition of strong political reporting and civic engagement.
 
During the Civil War, the paper opposed secession, supported Abraham Lincoln, and vigorously advocated for the creation of West Virginia. At times it was the only daily newspaper in western Virginia, and its wartime circulation exceeded 3,000. In the 20th century, H. C. Ogden’s acquisition and consolidation efforts shaped the modern Intelligencer and its sister publication, the Wheeling News-Register. Today, the paper continues publishing from 1500 Main Street.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library – Wheeling Intelligencer History (https://tinyurl.com/uk52awcn), Library of Congress – Chronicling America: Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/573z6cre), Library of Congress – Chronicling America: (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]), December 3, 1852 (https://tinyurl.com/yc6zjxtt), e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia – Wheeling Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/6jmy7afn), Wikipedia – The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register (https://tinyurl.com/mf7munc3)Wheeling Daily Intelligencer - First Issue [August 24, 1852] (https://tinyurl.com/5cacj5nh)

 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Google Maps, Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress

​Today in Wheeling History: August 23--Robert B. Lawrence, Wheeling inventor, patented an early fountain pen design (1870).
 
On August 23, 1870, the U.S. Patent Office granted Letters Patent No. 106,596 to Robert B. Lawrence of Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia, for a writing instrument he called a "Fountain Pen" on his own drawings, though the Patent Office formally titled the invention an "Improvement in Pen-Holders." Lawrence's design modified the standard wooden dip-pen holder common to the era, which held a steel nib rigidly in a metal sheath. His innovation was simple but practical: an annular groove cut into the wooden holder fitted with an India-rubber band, creating an elastic cushion for the pen's shank. This gave the whole instrument a small amount of give while writing, easing the pressure transmitted to the hand and reducing the stiffness that plagued users of rigid pen-holders during long writing sessions. Lawrence also incorporated a small ink reservoir — a bent-wire "fountain attachment" fitted into the holder's end — intended to supply ink directly to the nib, the feature that inspired his own name for the device.
 
Lawrence's patent stands as one of many small mechanical improvements to everyday writing instruments patented by Wheeling residents in the decades following the Civil War, when the city's tradesmen and craftsmen regularly sought federal protection for practical refinements to common tools.
 
To learn more: Google Patents - US106596A - Fountain Pen (https://tinyurl.com/4h7nk3tx)
 
Photo caption and credit: Patent drawing for R.B. Lawrence's "Fountain Pen," Patent No. 106,596, patented August 23, 1870. This pen-holder had a rubber band tucked inside it to give the pen a little bounce when you wrote, so your hand didn't get so tired and stiff after a while. There was also a tiny wire piece built in to hold some ink, so you didn't have to dip the pen quite as often. (U.S. Patent Office/Google Patents)

Today in Wheeling History: August 22—West Virginians narrowly ratify a new state constitution while rejecting a whites-only officeholding proposal, preserving Black civil rights and closely followed by Wheeling's press and political leaders (1872).
 
On August 22, 1872, West Virginia voters ratified the state's second constitution, 42,344 to 37,777, replacing the 1863 charter drafted in Wheeling's Custom House, now West Virginia Independence Hall and the birthplace of statehood. Historians describe the 1872 constitution as a Democratic-Conservative "counter-revolution" against the Unionist "Yankee" constitution of 1863, driven by many former Confederates who had regained power in the 1870 elections and sought to restore antebellum Virginia-style governance. The convention's Republican minority, the "Twelve Apostles," hailed from Marshall, Tyler, Preston, Hancock, Monongalia, and Taylor counties—notably not Ohio County, reflecting how thoroughly the Democratic sweep had reached even the old Unionist stronghold. Still, Wheeling had representation: attorney James Sanders Wheat, a former Restored Government of Virginia attorney general, served as an Ohio County delegate. Wheeling's dueling newspapers tracked the fight closely—the Republican “Wheeling Intelligencer,” edited by Archibald W. Campbell, criticized the ex-Confederate-dominated proceedings, while the Democratic “Wheeling Register” championed the new majority. When the new constitution swept out sitting judges statewide, Thayer Melvin of Wheeling's First Judicial Circuit was the lone circuit judge in the state reelected—every other circuit went Democratic. Despite the conservative tenor of the convention, delegates did not eliminate Black suffrage: the twelve Republicans helped defeat, by roughly 42,000 to 28,000, a companion measure restricting office holding to white men. The new constitution also revived county courts, abandoning the township system Wheeling lawmakers had favored in 1863, and it still governs West Virginia today.
 
To learn more: West Virginia Public Broadcasting, "August 22, 1872: West Virginians Narrowly Ratify a New State Constitution": https://tinyurl.com/5t44emh4, e-WV, "Constitutional Convention of 1872": https://tinyurl.com/55bc9c74, Marshall Digital Scholar, Richard O. Hartman, "A Constitution of Our Own": https://tinyurl.com/3v8s8d57, Oxford Constitutional Law: https://tinyurl.com/msbbhtzw, Ohio County Public Library, "Wheeling vs. Charleston: West Virginia's 'Floating Capital/Capitol'": https://tinyurl.com/2x8pkt3v, City of Wheeling, West Virginia: https://tinyurl.com/4mb6unu3, Wikipedia, "Wheeling, West Virginia": https://tinyurl.com/ycyja2j9, State Court Report, "The West Virginia Constitution: Mountaineers Are Always Free": https://tinyurl.com/44ajnjea, Ohio County Public Library, "Constitution of West Virginia 1863": https://tinyurl.com/hhprh7df, The Clio, "Wheeling Custom House/West Virginia Independence Hall": https://tinyurl.com/2x5847uj, Electric Scotland, "The History of West Virginia - Chapter III": https://tinyurl.com/37fptftz, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, "April 9, 1872: West Virginia Constitutional Convention Adjourns": https://tinyurl.com/52m3m3e8, WVU West Virginia & Regional History Center, "West Virginia. Constitution Convention [1872]": https://tinyurl.com/34hh9kcs, FindLaw, "State ex rel. Rist III v. Underwood [1999]": https://tinyurl.com/3cx86sn4, e-WV, "The Constitution of West Virginia": https://tinyurl.com/53b7bzyn, e-WV, "John Jeremiah Jacob": https://tinyurl.com/2tye5u9, Ballotpedia, "West Virginia Constitution": https://tinyurl.com/y4xj78sb, Wikipedia, "James Sanders Wheat": https://tinyurl.com/y4xj78sb, WVU Research Repository, "The view from the border: A study of gender and women's rights in West Virginia during the age of emancipation": https://tinyurl.com/bdz8hvnj, Journal of Negro History, "Mountaineer Reconstruction: Blacks in the Political Reconstruction of West Virginia": https://tinyurl.com/7wyy9hjj, WVU Research Repository, "Law Day Address": https://tinyurl.com/5aw8svvp, WVU Research Repository, "The impact of statehood and Republican politics on women's legal rights in West Virginia, 1863-1872": https://tinyurl.com/32cnkb6h
 
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons, The West Virginia Encyclopedia

Today in Wheeling History: August 21—Wheeling opens its 1906 Saengerfest, welcoming regional German singing societies for three days of concerts, parades, and celebrations of German‑American musical culture (1906).
 
Wheeling's 1906 Saengerfest was the largest and last of the city's three regional German singing festivals, following gatherings in 1860 and 1885. By the early twentieth century, Wheeling was a deeply German city, with a German-language newspaper, German classes in city schools, and German-language services at several churches. Between 1855 and 1961, the city supported numerous singing societies, including the Arion, Harmonie, Maennerchor, Beethoven, Germania, Liedertafel, Mozart, Concordia, Liederkranz, and Teutonia. By 1906, only three remained active: the upscale Arion, based at Arion Hall on 20th and Main streets; the working-class Beethoven, which outlasted the others until 1961; and South Wheeling's Mozart Society, backed by brewer Henry Schmulbach. Hosted for the Central Ohio Singing District during an oppressive August heat wave, the festival drew two dozen singing societies from Columbus, Steubenville, Dayton, and other Ohio towns. Concerts centered on the Court Theatre, where the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra accompanied a chorus of 700 men and 600 children. Buildings across town were draped in German and American bunting, and the festivities closed with a grand parade and a beer-fueled picnic at Mozart Park. Within a decade, anti-German sentiment surrounding World War I ended the tradition: city schools dropped German instruction in 1918, businesses erased "German" from their names, and every singing society but the Beethoven disbanded. The Ohio County Public Library revived the Saengerfest tradition twice: in 2010, marking the 125th anniversary of the 1885 Saengerfest, and again on May 29, 2016, marking the 110th anniversary of the 1906 festival, when Dayton's Liederkranz-Turner Club and Cincinnati's Kolping Society returned to perform for the library.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library – Saengerfest History (https://tinyurl.com/4u6mnk7v), Ohio County Public Library - 1906 Wheeling Saengerfest Revisited (https://tinyurl.com/mutr64ma), Archiving Wheeling - "German Days" (https://tinyurl.com/2uvv5jxu), Ohio County Public Library - Photo Gallery - Saengerfest 1906 Revisited (https://tinyurl.com/ysx58cyd), Ohio County Public Library - Festivals: Saengerfest - Music in the Air: Wheeling's 1906 Saengerfest Revisited (https://tinyurl.com/6bmc4ss9), Weelunk - Henry Episode 1 Recap: Schmulbach's Lasting Legacy (https://tinyurl.com/y67fmx2p), YouTube - Ohio County Public Library - Lunch With Books: Wheeling Saengerfest 2010 with Eintracht German Singing Society of Dayton, Ohio (https://tinyurl.com/2umnw33b), Wikipedia - Sängerfest (https://tinyurl.com/4jhfyufa), Ohio County Public Library - Lunch With Books (Sunday Edition): Saengerfest II - May 26, 2016 (https://tinyurl.com/47khd5en), Ohio County Public Library - Adventures in Archives: History Mysteries Solved (https://tinyurl.com/37h9f87r), Ohio County Public Library - Reymann Brewing Co. (https://tinyurl.com/38ewkeh2), West Virginia History OnView - Saengerfest at Court Theatre, Wheeling, W. Va. (https://tinyurl.com/2un5h5cv), Archiving Wheeling - Arion Hall on 20th and Main was the Saengerfest headquarters (https://tinyurl.com/463hjext), Archiving Wheeling - Music in the Air: Wheeling's 1906 Saengerfest Revisited (https://tinyurl.com/7yas7pt7), Flickr - Ohio County Public Library - Saengerfest (https://tinyurl.com/5437k98r)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; West Virginia History OnView, Google Maps Streetview

T​oday in Wheeling History: August 20--Fourth Street Methodist Church congregation begins worshiping in Clay Junior High School auditorium after its Chapline Street sanctuary is declared unsafe (1950). 
 
In 1949, serious structural damage occurred to Fourth Street Methodist’s third church building on Chapline Street while a commercial structure was being erected on the adjacent lot. The walls and foundation were judged unsafe, forcing the historic congregation—founded in 1785 as Wheeling’s first organized church—to vacate its long‑time sanctuary. Under the leadership of Dr. William Knox, who had become pastor in 1949 after earlier appointments across West Virginia, the congregation arranged to worship temporarily in the auditorium of Clay Junior High School, a modern thirty‑five‑room East Wheeling school complex at Fifteenth and Wood Streets completed during World War II. From August 20 to October 15, 1950, Sunday services and church activities were held in this public‑school setting, reflecting both the congregation’s resilience and the cooperation of the city’s educational authorities. Meanwhile, Fourth Street negotiated the purchase of the 1937–38 Fidelity Building at 11th and Chapline, an Art Deco limestone structure whose interior and mechanical systems were well suited to adaptive reuse as a “Methodist Building.” By late October 1950 the congregation began worshiping there, and on January 1, 1951, it took full legal possession, closing a brief but significant chapter of worship in Clay Junior High’s auditorium.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library - Fourth Street Methodist Church History (https://tinyurl.com/mpk6tawj), Ohio County Public Library - Clay School [2nd & 3rd Ward] (https://tinyurl.com/3cdxf8bf), Historic Wheeling - 1000 Chapline Block (https://tinyurl.com/3p7b8u3b), Wheeling Heritage - 4th Street Methodist Church (https://tinyurl.com/4dwczvxb), Ohio County Public Library - Fourth Street Methodist (https://tinyurl.com/vvp74nx9), The United Methodist Church - West Virginia Conference - Fourth Street UMC (60541) Wheeling West Virginia (https://tinyurl.com/y3z2jvyx), Wheeling Heritage - Wheeling's Historic Churches [brochure] (https://tinyurl.com/3et2k5uc), Flickr - Ohio County Public Library - Fourth Street Methodist (https://tinyurl.com/4zabrr9r)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Historic Wheeling, Steve Novotney, Weelunk

​Today in Wheeling History: April 19--Bruce Meredith, Olympic marksman and distinguished military officer, was born in Wheeling (1937).
 
Bruce Meredith established himself as one of America's most accomplished sharpshooters through a remarkable career spanning over five decades. Born in Wheeling and raised in Boggs Run, a coal mining hollow near Benwood, Meredith attended Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling on an athletic/work scholarship, hitchhiking daily in uniform to school. At Linsly, he excelled in multiple sports and discovered his talent for marksmanship in the school's mandatory shooting program.
 
After working at Wheeling Steel to save money for college, Meredith attended West Virginia University where he lettered in rifle from 1958-1961. As team captain, he led WVU to its first collegiate national team title and won the national individual smallbore championship with a record score. He became WVU's first rifle All-American in 1960 and repeated in 1961.
 
Following graduation, Meredith served in the Army for eight years on active duty and 22 years in the Army Reserve, retiring as a Colonel in 1991. His military shooting career included winning the 1967 National Smallbore Prone title with a national record and earning gold medals at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg.
 
Meredith's competitive longevity is unmatched, having qualified for four Olympic Games (1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000). At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, he gained recognition as the oldest competitor at age 63. His achievements include setting 164 USA national records and becoming the only American to earn distinguished awards in six shooting disciplines.
 
To learn more: WVU Sports Hall of Fame (https://tinyurl.com/4dhumt3s), Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/rpkjbek7), The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register (https://tinyurl.com/24hzum4n), NRA Shooting Sports USA (https://tinyurl.com/yc64pb56)
 
Photo credits: WVU Hall of Fame, Olympedia, NRA Shooting Sports USA

​Today in Wheeling History: August 19—Elder Joseph C. Allen, pastor of Bethlehem Apostolic Temple, dies of a heart attack in Denver, Colorado, while attending a national Pentecostal convention (1974).
 
Elder Joseph C. Allen was born in Dayton, Ohio, on September 16, 1926, the son of Elder Albert J. and Anna Couch Allen. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Before coming to Wheeling, he was associate minister of Bethesda Temple in Dayton and worked for the Ormet Corporation. In 1964, Allen accepted the pastorate of Bethlehem Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in Wheeling, then meeting in a renovated building at 60 13th Street with a congregation reduced to about a dozen members. In 1965 he oversaw its renaming to Bethlehem Apostolic Temple, and under his leadership the congregation built a new sanctuary at 330 North Main Street, holding its first service there April 20, 1973. Allen and his family lived at 220 Washington Avenue. He also served on the Ohio District Council of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Inc. On August 19, 1974, while in Denver for the denomination's national convention, Allen suffered a fatal heart attack; he was 47. He was survived by his widow, Blanche Aston Allen; daughters Rhonda L., Lynette M., and Lacretia A.; son 1st Lt. Stephan D. Allen, U.S. Army, Fort Carson, Colorado; four brothers and five sisters, most of Dayton. Funeral services were held at Bethlehem Apostolic Temple with Bishop C.R. Lee officiating and Bishop James Tyson delivering the eulogy. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Wheeling.
 
To learn more: Greater Love Ministries – Bethlehem Temple History (https://tinyurl.com/4bpwufdc), Wheeling News-Register – "Rites Set At Church For Pastor" (https://tinyurl.com/3e36a5p5), Wheeling News-Register – Death Notices – Elder Joseph C. Allen (https://tinyurl.com/3e36a5p5), Wheeling Intelligencer – Area Pastor Dies At Church Meet (https://tinyurl.com/44kayayf)
 
Photo credits: Wheeling Intelligencer, Wheeling News-Register, Google Maps

​Today in Wheeling History: August 18—Carter Farm, also known as "Everbreeze," a Greek Revival hilltop farm on Boggs Hill near Wheeling, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1983).
 
Perched atop Boggs Hill Road southwest of Wheeling, Everbreeze has been Carter family property since 1796, when the family acquired 400 acres along the ridge overlooking the Ohio River. Early generations built log and wood structures, including the 1819 "Wool House," the farm's oldest surviving building. By the 1840s the family's prosperity allowed Richard Carter to begin a new residence in 1848, completed in 1852 under Wheeling master carpenter D.W. Gibson. The one-and-a-half-story brick house, with hipped roof, knee windows piercing a broad frieze, and a symmetrical five-bay facade, is considered an outstanding rural example of Greek Revival architecture in the Ohio Valley. Its original Victorian-era porch was replaced in 1946 with a portico echoing the 1852 design. Surviving outbuildings include a brick slave quarters and detached kitchen contemporary with the main house—among the only such structures remaining in Ohio County—along with a large 1948 barn. Descendants prominent beyond the farm include Dr. John T. Carter, a Cincinnati and Triadelphia physician, and a namesake banker who served in the West Virginia House of Delegates. Harlan P. Carter II owned Everbreeze when it entered the National Register in 1983; he and wife Jeanne, both West Virginia University graduates and longtime Ohio County educators, later continued its stewardship, keeping the farm in the same family for over two centuries.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia - Carter Farm (https://tinyurl.com/37yb6tsx), NHRP nomination form (https://tinyurl.com/afm8msxc), SAH Archipedia – Carter Farm [Everbreeze] (https://tinyurl.com/bddjtzxz), NRHP data summary – Carter Farm (https://tinyurl.com/yc89y8b7), Jeanne Carter: A Legacy of Service in Wheeling (https://tinyurl.com/3j3jxt8v)
 
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons, Michael J. Pauley (via State Historic Preservation Office, West Virginia Division of Culture and History)

Today in Wheeling History: August 17—Lyman B. Goud, Wheeling electrician, patents a hand-winch device designed to pull automobiles free when stuck in mud or sand (1917).
 
Lyman Baxter Goud was born September 22, 1889, in Caribou, Aroostook County, Maine, the son of Arthur Valmore Goud and Eliza Ann Teague Goud. He trained as an electrician at the Bliss Electrical School near Washington, D.C., graduating with a class of eighty-five students in June 1911. By 1917 Goud had settled in Wheeling, West Virginia, where city directories list him boarding at the YMCA. That August, while a resident of Ohio County, he filed a patent for a "Device for Manually Moving Automobiles," a hand-cranked drum-and-cable winch designed to pull stuck vehicles free of mud or sand using a tree or other anchor; the patent was granted the following June. Goud registered for the World War I draft and was inducted into the Army at Wheeling on July 24, 1918. He served stateside with the 154th Depot Brigade and later the 211th Field Signal Battalion, was promoted to corporal, and was honorably discharged on demobilization February 1, 1919, without seeing overseas duty. After the war he worked for Western Electric's Hawthorne Works before relocating to Brooklyn, New York, where in 1924 he patented a second invention, a gearless automobile transmission mechanism. He later worked in electrical construction on Long Island. Goud died August 24, 1970, at age eighty, and is buried alongside his wife, Alice, at Restland Memorial Park in East Hanover, New Jersey.
 
To learn more: Google Patents - Device for manually moving automobiles (https://tinyurl.com/j4pjf3vr), Google Patents - Transmission mechanism for vehicles (https://tinyurl.com/3vravb9h), Find a Grave - Lyman Baxter Goud (https://tinyurl.com/bdwvvkn8), Library of Congress - The Evening Star - Bliss Electrical School Graduation [June 3, 1911] (https://tinyurl.com/bdd5t98c), HeritageQuest by Ancestry - Lyman B. Goud (https://tinyurl.com/2aznywyk) (https://tinyurl.com/4p9ddpv2), Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office [1926] (https://tinyurl.com/necacr9e), Western Electric News - Volume 8 - Page 20 [1919] (https://tinyurl.com/3hh7w5sx), Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine [1929] (https://tinyurl.com/46vewx8y), Roster of Maine in the Military Service of the United States and Allies in the World War 1917-1919 [1929] (https://tinyurl.com/mpwruuvz), Organization and the Execution of the Selective Service Act in the State of West Virginia [1920] (https://tinyurl.com/57a5344r), U.S. Patent Office - Annual Report: 1918 [1919] - Page 204 (https://tinyurl.com/3kevedy5), Ohio County Public Library - Young Men's Christian Group: YMCA (https://tinyurl.com/ub6jyywe)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; U.S. Patent Office, Find a Grave

Today in Wheeling History: August 15—First Lieutenant John R. Specht, a McMechen native and 1941 graduate of Wheeling Central Catholic, was killed when his B-24 Liberator blew a tire on takeoff and crashed at Lecce, Italy, while serving with the 98th Bombardment Group (1944).
 
John Robert Specht was born in McMechen, Marshall County, on November 7, 1923, son of John J. Specht and Martha Dolores Kelly Specht. His mother died in 1929, and his father remarried her sister, Esther A. Kelly, the following year. Specht graduated from Central High School (later Wheeling Central Catholic) in Wheeling in 1941 and went on to West Virginia University in Morgantown. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Wheeling on July 31, 1942, entering active duty February 2, 1943. He trained as a pilot at Nashville, Tennessee; Maxwell Field, Alabama; Clarksdale, Mississippi; Newport, Arkansas; and George Field, Illinois, earning his wings and a commission as second lieutenant in November 1943. Promoted to first lieutenant, he piloted a B-24 Liberator nicknamed "Specht's Wreck," with the 345th Bomb Squadron, 98th Bombardment Group, Fifteenth Air Force, going overseas in June 1944 to fly from the group's base at Lecce, Italy. On August 15, 1944, as the 98th Bombardment Group flew in support of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France, Specht's plane blew a tire on takeoff from Lecce and crashed on what would have been his 31st mission, killing six of the eleven men aboard, including Specht; five crewmen survived. He was 20. His remains were returned to McMechen in 1949 for a High Mass of Requiem at St. James Church and burial, with military honors, at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Wheeling.
 
To learn more: Archiving Wheeling - High Masses of Requiem (https://tinyurl.com/39wn3d4m), Army Air Corps Library and Museum – 98th Bombardment Group Honor Roll Project (https://tinyurl.com/3cjvh8jp), Find a Grave - 1LT John Robert Specht (https://tinyurl.com/mvyz2rtu), USAF Serial Number Search Results (https://tinyurl.com/ms6ttkah), American Archive - 41-11819 - Raunchy (https://tinyurl.com/yvrw9apu), 98th Bombardment Group (https://tinyurl.com/5nxtf98y), Aviation Safety Network (https://tinyurl.com/2xrkkd65), WW2AIRCRAFT.NET (https://tinyurl.com/44jf4c22), USAAF Aircraft Serial Numbers (?), USAAFDATA - American Air Forces lives lost during WW2 (https://tinyurl.com/es3pxrk6), West Virginia GenWeb [Marshall County] - John R. Specht (https://tinyurl.com/55se8jyd), Wikipedia - Operation Dragoon (https://tinyurl.com/5car65mz)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, Find a Grave