HARRISON COUNTY, West Virginia
Formation & Early History
1776 Map - District of West Augusta
History of The Land
Their government was a kind of patriarchal Confederacy. The small villages or families had a chief who ruled or controlled it, and their several bands composing a nation had a chief who presided over the whole.
The Powhatan Confederacy in Tide Water, Virginia, South of the Potomac, was composed of thirty tribes or villages numbering a population of about 8000 being one to the square mile, and capable of putting 2400 warriors in the field.
The tribes on the head waters of the James, Potomac and Kappahonnock North of the falls of these rivers were hostile to the Powhatans and were attached to the Mannahoacs.
Jefferson says "Westward of all these tribes, beyond the mountains and extending to the great lakes were the Massawamees a most powerful confederacy, who harassed unremittingly the Powhatans and Mannahoacs. These were probably the ancestors of tribes known at present by the name of the Six Nations.
At the time the Territory of West Virginia was first known to the whites all sources of information agree that there were no permanent towns within its boundaries, that it was a kind of a "No man's land."
There were probably at all times small parties and families living in rude wigwams scattered along all the principal rivers of the State en- gaged in hunting, who had their permanent homes west of the Ohio.
Their camping places were known by the first settlers as "Fort Fields," and to this day arrow heads, stone hatchets, bones and mussel shells, charcoal and pottery are still turned up by the plow.
The burying places were often on high hills and the burial seems to have been made by covering the body with a heap of stones.
Unless the old fields of Hardy County were planted by the Indians, it is supposed that no crops were raised in West Virginia. This is owing probably to the dense forest which at that time covered the Country and to the great labor necessary to clear off the timber, as the Indians were never known to engage in anything requiring regular and prolonged hard work.
The flint out of which their weapons and tools were made is found in Ritchie, Randolph and Pocahontas Counties.
While they constructed no roads they had regular routes of travel, which were beaten into well defined paths by the passing feet of many generations of pedestrians, which were as plain to the Indian as a turn- pike to the White Man.
As they had no beasts of burden the labor of moving where all their effects had to be carried on their persons must have been considerable, but this work fell to the lot of the squaws.
On some of the streams canoes were used when the depth of the water permitted.
The Catawba War Path or Warriors Road as it was sometimes called, led from Western New York by way of Fayette County, Pa., crossing the Cheat at the mouth of Grassy Run, through the Tygart's valley to the Holston River. Over this route the Six Nations traveled in their wars against the Southern Indians.
A branch of this trail bore South West from McFarland's on Cheat to the Monongahela, down Fish Creek to the Ohio River, thence through Southern Ohio to Kentucky.
An Eastern trail was up Fish Creek from the Ohio down Indian and up White Day Creeks and on to the South Branch Valley. Other trails ran East from the Tygart's Valley to the South Branch, that known as the Seneca being the principal one.
A trail ran up the Big Kanwaha and reached into North Carolina, and one ran up the Little Kanawha thence to the waters of the West Fork, up Hacker's Creek, through the Buckhannon country to the Tygart's Valley.
The settlements that were made on and near these trails by the whites were subject to repeated raids from the Indians beyond the Ohio and suffered severely from them.
The trails leading from the Ohio East were well known to the early settlers, and scouts were posted on them near the Ohio to give the alarm to the settlers of the approach of war parties.
Whatever tribes said to have been the Hurons, occupied or claimed West Virginia, were conquered and driven out by the Six Nations, who had their seat of Government in Western New York, and the territory held by right of conquest.
The six nations were composed of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagoes, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, the Tuscaroras being admitted to the Confederacy in 1712, before that time they were known as the Five Nations.
The conquered and claimed territory reaching from Massachusetts to the Lakes and South to the Tennessee.
At a treaty held by Sir William Johnson with them at Fort Stanwix, now Rome, New York, in 1768, they relinquished title to the King of all territory lying East of a line commencing at the mouth of the Tennessee up the Ohio and Allegheny rivers to Kittanning Creek, thence N. E. to the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.
The Shawnees, Delawares, Mingoes and other small tribes living on and West of the Ohio laid claim to some of this territory, and continued to dispute its possession with the whites until the treaty of Greenville by Wayne in 1795.
The occupation of Fort Duquesne by the English followed by the treaty of Fort Stanwix extinguishing the Indian title to West Virginia, emigration set in and continued until the occupation of the State, not- withstanding the hostilities of the Ohio Indians and the War of the Revolution.
Whether the race known as Mound Builders, whose work is scattered over the State, were the ancestors of the Indians, or whether the latter destroyed them, must always remain in doubt.
Whoever they w^ere and what part they played on the stage of human events will never be known. The record of their lives has been closed, never to be opened again.
It is but little that can be said of the early Indian of West Virginia. As a child of the forest he worked out the problem of his simple life.
He left no written record of the history of his race, no monument commemorating the deeds of his great men, no ruined palaces no works or buildings of a public nature. He simply lived out his miserable existence in the dreary forest to the end with no higher ambition in life than to triumph over his enemies, and leaving nothing to show to others that he had ever lived save a few stone weapons and the ashes of his fires.
The coming of the white man was an evil day for the red one, and even in his untutored mind he saw the dawn of a new era which was foreign to his nature, and which he could not understand and would not accept and therein he read the doom of his race.
The dark night of barbarism that for untold centuries had brooded over the green hills and along the fair rivers of West Virginia has been dispelled by the bright light of a new civilization, and the courage and energy of the pioneer has made the once savage wilderness blossom as the rose.
Early Exploration and Settlement
Early Western Virginia TIMELINE...
late 1500's - early 1600's Several thousand Huron's occupy territory
1600's Iroquois Confederacy (at the time, consisting of... Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca's) drives Hurons from territory and use it primarily for a hunting ground.
early 1700's During early 1700's the Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo & other tribes also use territory for hunting. The Tuscarora's inhabited the Potomac Highlands of present day West Virginia, but migrated northward into New York, and in 1712 was admitted into and became the sixth nation of the Iriquois Confederacy - also called the "Six Nations."
1725 Fur Traders explore western Appalachians... Tensions between Great Britain & France as they both struggled to gain control over the vast territories of the North American continent prompted Great Britain to institute the policy of encouraging settlement west of the Alleghany Mountains.
1742 Coal discovered on the Coal River near Racine by John Howard and John Peter Salling
1744 Territory between the Alleghanies & Ohio River ceded to the English by the Indians of the Six Nations Confederation in Treaty of Lancaster
1748 George Washington surveys land in Western Virginia for Lord Fairfax; "Harper's Ferry" begins transporting passengers across Shenandoah River
1749 King George II grants 500,000 acres south of the Ohio River between the Little Kanawha & Monongahela rivers to the Ohio Land Company. Conditions for this Charter required the company to build a fort and settle one hundred families in seven years.
1749 1st recorded settlement west of Alleghanies made in Marlinton by Jacob Marlin & Stephen Sewell
1752 An act of the Virginia Assembly releases settlers from the payment of taxes for a period of ten years if they will relocate to lands west of the mountains
1754 Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia promises lands to soldiers who will fight in the French & Indian wars.
1754-63 [ French & Indian Wars ]
1758 After the capture of french Fort Duquesne (later called Fort Pitt), colonists cross the Alleghanies to settle the new lands. Under the protection of the english Fort Pitt, they begin settlement of the area surrounding Fort Pitt and gradually branch outwards up the surrounding streams and valleys.
1758 - Fall Settlement attempted by Thomas Decker at Decker's Creek in present-day Morgantown - Settlement broken up by party of Delawares & Mingo Indians and most of the inhabitants murdered
1762 Romney & Mecklenburg (Shepherdstown) established
1763 Harper's Ferry incorporated
1763 France cedes the Ohio Valley territory to England in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. In an effort to appease the Indians and prevent further bloodshed, King George III forbids colonists from occupying territories west of Alleghanies and orders those already there to leave unless they purchase land from the Indians. Settlers here largely disregard the proclamation. Their position - the Indians had not occupied this
territory previously and only used it for hunting ground.
1765 Clarksburg settled
1766 Survey of Mason-Dixon line reaches western boundary between Maryland & Western Virginia; Zackquill Morgan, James Chew, and James Prickett make permanent settlement at present-day Morgantown.
1767 Ice's Ferry in Monongalia County founded by Frederick Ice. His son, Adam Ice, is first white child born in Monongahela valley
1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix - Iraquois cede land north of Little Kanawha to British
1769 Settlers begin to arrive. Wheeling founded by Col. Ebenezer Zane
1771 Natural gas discovered in Kanawha Valley by John Floyd
1772 Ohio & Kanawha Rivers explored by George Rogers Clark
1774 Fort Fincastle (later renamed Henry) constructed at Wheeling; Prickett's Fort constructed near Fairmont
1774 Oct 10 Battle of Point Pleasant - (Lord Dunmore's War) between Virginia settlers and militia and a confederacy of Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, Cayuga, and other Indian tribes led by Cheif Cornstalk.
1775 Gas discovered near Charleston
1776 Western Virginia petitions Continental Congress for a separate government
1776 July 4 - Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia, PA
1777 Indian warfare begins
September - Indians unsuccessfully besiege Fort Henry
November 10 - Chief Corstalk, his son, and Chief Red Hawk murdered by whites at Fort Randolph
1778 March 3 - Thomas Harbert [Sr], his daughter Cecilia and others murdered in retaliation by a Shawnee raiding party for the death of Chief Cornstalk.
1782 Revolutionary War battle fought at Wheeling
1783 Settlers west of the Alleghany Mountains attempt to create "Westsylvania"... a new state
1784 July Harrison, Ohio & Monongalia Counties formed from District of West Augusta
1787 Randolph County created from Harrison County
1788 Federal Constitution ratified by Virginia
1789 Daniel Boone commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the Kanawha Militia; Road from Winchester reaches Clarksburg
1790 First [West] Virginia newspaper published in Shepherdstown - "The Potomak Guardian & Berkeley Advertiser"
[US] Census Population: 55,873
1791 Daniel Boone elected as a delegate to the Virginia Assembly
1792 June 30 First [West] Virginia Post Office established at Martinsburg
1794 First Iron Furnace constructed West of the Alleghenies at King's Creek
1794 December 19 Charleston established by Virginia General Assembly
1800 [WEST] Virginia Statistics: 13 Counties, 8 Post Offices, 19 Incorporated Towns; 78,000 people
1803 First Newspaper West of the Alleghenies - The "Monongalia Gazette & Morgantown Advertiser"
1810 Western Virginia protests unequal representation in Virginia Legislature; Clarksburg's first newspaper - the "Bye-Stander" published
1817 First [West] Virginia bank opens - "The Northwestern Bank of Virginia"
1818 The "Cumberland Road" or "National Road" completed - from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, (West) Virginia; First
commercial coal mine opens at Fairmont
1820 Charleston's first newspaper - the "Kenawha Spectator" published
1823 First [West] Virginia religious newspaper - "The Christian Baptist" published
1825 In his fourteen month tour, Major General Marquis De Lafayette - French nobleman who came to the Colonies in 1777 at his own
expense and volunteered his services to help in the fight for Independence, arrives in Wheeling as he travels the whole country - visiting all 24 states and principal
1826 Map of Virginia
1830 The "Wheeling Gazette" proposes separation of western Virginia from eastern Virginia
1831 Slavery debates increase political tension in Virginia
1834 First commercial coal company - "Ohio Mining Company" opens in the Kanawha Valley
1835 Wheeling - John Templeton, John Moore, Stanley Cuthbert & Ellen Ritchie - charged with illegally teaching blacks to read
1836 First railroad reaches state at Harper's Ferry
1841 Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike completed
1847 First telegraph line reaches (West) Virginia at Wheeling
1849 1,010 foot Wheeling Bridge completed; Longest bridge in world fro 1849-1851; Destroyed by wind in 1854.
1851 Joseph Johnson - from Bridgeport - elected Governor of Virginia; Only governor of Virginia ever elected from western sector of state; New constitution grants concessions to the west.
1852 Dec. 24 B&O Railroad completed to Wheeling; Begun in 1828 it stretches from Baltimore to Wheeling and now at 370 miles is longest railroad in the world.
1854 Wheeling Bridge blown down by high winds - new span completed in 1856...
1857 B&O Railroad reaches Parkersburg
1859 First successful oil well - The Rathbone Well - drilled on Burning Springs Run in Wirt County in what would become West Virginia
October 16 - John Brown and his followers raid Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry
December 2 - John Brown hanged in Charles Town
1860 Commercial oil well drilled at Burning Springs
1861 Western Virginia contributes approx: 32,000 soldiers to Union Army & 10,000 soldiers to Confederate Army; Union Army drives
Confederate forces out of the Monongahela and Kanawha valleys and through remainder of war holds region west of the Alleghenies & controls the B&O Railroad.
April 17 Virginia state convention votes to secede from Union - contingent on approval by popular vote
May 13-15 Delegates from 25 counties meet at First Wheeling Convention and repudiate secession from Union
May 23 Although opposed by large majority of voters in western counties, Virginia's ordinance for secession is ratified
June 3 First land battle of Civil War fought at Philippi
June 11-15 After U.S. Congress accept two new senators from western Virginia to represent it, the Second Wheeling Convention meets and creates the "Restored Government of Virginia" - chooses Francis H. Pierpoint of Fairmont as its new governor
August 6 Second Wheeling Convention reconvenes...
August 20 Second Wheeling Convention adopts a dismemberment ordinance providing for a new state to be called Kanawha
September 10 Battle of Carnifex Ferry
September 11-13 Battle of Cheat Mountain
October 24 In a public referendum, voters overwhelmingly support creation of a new state - to be called Kanawha...
November 1-3 Confederate General John B. Floyd's troops attack Union General Rosecrans' Union forces at Gauley Bridge
November 6 Battle of Droop Mountain
November 11 Guyandotte, Cabell County burnt by Union troops in retaliation for a raid by the Confederate cavalry
November 26 Second Wheeling convention reconvenes - changes name of new state to West Virginia - begins drafting a constitution and
extends boundaries of the new state
1862 January Colored School Board of Parkersburg, WV-formed by seven men and organize a day school for black children; First
public school for blacks
April Voters approve state Constitution for West Virginia
May 13" Restored Government of Virginia" gives formal consent to formation of new state and petitions U.S. Congress for admission to
Union
May 23 Union troops defeat Confederates at Lewisburg
May 29 William T. Willey - U.S. Senator - presents memorial to U.S. Senate requesting formation of new state and admission to Union
July 14 U.S. Senate passes West Virginia Statehood Bill - changes the slavery provision of the West Virginia Constitution to allow for the
gradual emancipation of slavery
September 13 Battle of Charleston - Union Troops take over occupation of city
December 31 President Lincoln approves act of admission of West Virginia to Union - to take effect upon insertion of clause into State
Constitution providing for gradual emancipation of slaves
1863 April 20 President Lincoln issues proclamation admitting West Virginia into union after a 60-day waiting period
April 27 Confederate General William Jones attempts to burn suspension bridge over the Monongahela River
April 29 J ones defeats Union troops at Fairmont and burns library of Francis H. Pierpoint
June 20 West Virginia admitted to Union as the 35th state. Arthur I. Boreman of Parkersburg inaugurated at Wheeling as first governor
August 7 Battle of Moorefield
1865 February 3 Governor approves act abolishing slavery - providing for immediate emancipation of all slaves
April 9 Civil War ends
1866 State constitution amended to deny citizenship to all who had supported the Confederacy; Hospital for insane at Weston completed - 1st public institution in state
May 24 Voters ratify constitutional amendment denying citizenship to all who aided Confederacy
1867 Legislature establishes Agricultural College of West Virginia in Morgantown; Fairmont State College established; Storer College -
one of country's first black colleges - opens at Harper's Ferry, Jefferson County
1868 Agricultural College of West Virginia renamed West Virginia University; Only national cemetery in state established at Grafton, Taylor County
1869 February 10 Charleston named seat of government "on and after April 1, 1870." (The seat moved to Wheeling in 1875 but restored
to Charleston permanently in 1885)
1870 West Virginia's population is 442,014; School for Deaf and Blind established at Romney; Huntington founded as western terminus of Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad
April 1 State capitol moved from Wheeling to Charleston
1871 April 27 All persons stripped of voting privileges in 1866 have their citizenship restored
1873 Chesapeake & Ohio Railway completes its line across state from White Sulphur Springs to Huntington
June 11 Charleston Mayor Snyder and city council appoint Ernest Porterfield as a police officer, the first black to receive a public job in
Kanawha County and possibly West Virginia. Within one hour, the remainder of the white police force, including Chief Rand,
resigned. Rather than ask for Porterfield's resignation, Snyder hired a new force.
1875 State capitol moved to Wheeling
1877 August 7 In public referendum, state residents to decide whether Charleston, Clarksburg, or Martinsburg to become permanent
site of state capitol. Thirty days after election, Governor Henry M Mathews proclaims after eight years Charleston would be
government's permanent seat.
1879 First oil pipeline in West Virginia completed - running 15 miles from Volcano to Parkersburg - later in year town and oilfield at Volcano burned; Bloch brothers begin manufacture of Mail Pouch tobacco at Wheeling; In Wheeling a telephone line is installed between
the two Behrens grocery stores - apparent first telephone connection in West Virginia
1880 Governor Mathews sends militia to Hawks Nest to stop state's first major coal strike; 1880 Census: West Virginia's population
618,457; A telephone exchange is installed in Wheeling - first in state
1882 Wheeling electric light plant begins operation; Telephone exchange installed in Parkersburg; Twenty-year-long Hatfield-McCoy feud erupts
1883 Norfolk & Western Railroad brings railway service to McDowell, Mercer & other counties in southern West Virginia; First long distance line in state is constructed - connecting Wheeling to Pittsburgh; Telephone exchange installed in Charleston
1885 Charleston becomes permanent state capitol; The National Gas Co. of West Virginia established - producing gas from northern
panhandle wells
1886 November 12 Electric lights first shine on Huntington's streets
1888 Salem Academy (later Salem College) established at Salem
1889 Drilling near Mannington initiate oil boom in area on modern scale
1890 United Mine Workers of America Union is formed; Office of Inspector of Mines for coal industry created; 1890 Census: West
Virginia's population 762,704. Largest cities are: Wheeling 34,522; Huntington 10,108; Parkersburg 8408; Martinsburg 7226; and Charleston 6742.
1896 Rural free mail delivery begins in Charles Town - first in United States
1897 December 16 Notorious public hanging at Ripley - promts legislature to turn over responsibility for executions to state government;
Hanging of John Morgan is last public hanging in West Virginia. [Tom T. Hall wrote song about this event - "The Last Public Hanging in Ripley, West Virginia"
Bird's Eye View Map of Clarksburg, West Virginia - 1898
1907 January 29 - 84 or 88, killed at mine disaster at Stuart, Fayette County;
February 4 - 25 killed in mine disaster at Thomas, Tucker County;
December 6 - Explosions at coal mine at Monongah kill 362 men and boys in worst mine disaster in U.S. history
1908 May 10 According to one accounting - first Mother's Day service held at St. Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton
1915 U.S. Supreme Court rules West Virginia owes Virginia more than $12.3 million as part of the state debt at time of separation