Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.

Conditions Governing Access

No special access restriction applies.

Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Ralph Edwin "Ted" Spears, Jr., Compiler, Battelle-MacLane-Mendel-Spears Family Collection, A&M 4042, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift from Spears, Ralph Edwin "Ted", Jr., 2014/08/14

Biographical / Historical

This collection features a variety of family relatives and ancestors of Ralph Edwin "Ted" Spears, Jr. Among them are members of the Spears, MacLane, Mendel, and Battelle families. His parents were Ralph Edwin Spears (Sr.) (1893-1954) and Clerimond Mendel (1893-1995), whose parents were Margaret Battelle (1860-1939) and Harry J. Mendel (1858-1920). Margaret Battelle's parents were William G. Battelle (1835-1869) and Anna A. MacLane (1836-1893). Ted Spears's great-great-grandfather was Cornelius Battelle (1807-1897), a prominent Ohio minister and brother of Gordon Battelle (1814-1862), who was a Methodist minister and Civil War chaplain, abolitionist, and a leader in the statehood of West Virginia. The Battelle Memorial Institute was established in the 1920s by Gordon Battelle (1883-1923), grandson and his namesake.

Scope and Contents

Collection of the Battelle, MacLane, Mendel, and Spears families from southern Ohio and north-central West Virginia (including Wheeling and Morgantown), comprised of genealogy, records, clippings, photographs, artifacts, and more. Collection includes family genealogy and records (Box 1), individual carte de visites, cabinet cards, and assorted family photographs and newspaper article clippings (Box 1-2). Additional photographs include several cased family photographs such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes, mostly of Anna MacLane Battelle, her husband, William G. Battelle, and their son, James (Box 3). Family scrapbooks include personal photographs of Ted Spears and others and related ephemera (Box 4). Photographs of Ted Spears pertain to his college years at WVU and other events. Artifacts include family bibles and a lock of hair (Box 1), children's gloves, eyeglasses, earrings, and a ring (Box 3), and a safe deposit metal lock box (Box 6). A portrait of Ted Spears's great-grandfather, William G. Battelle, is included (Box 5).

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Battelle family
• Daguerreotypes (photographs)
• Family histories.
• Genealogy
• MacLane family
• Mendel family
• Photographs.
• Photography of families
• Scrapbooks
• Spears family
• Spears, Ralph Edwin, Jr. (1919-2014)
• Statehood politics -- West Virginia
• ambrotypes (photographs)
• tintypes (photographs)