History of West Virginia, Old and New - Chapter II SURVEY OF LANDMARKS

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From The History of West Virginia,
Old and New, by James Morton Callahan, 1923, 
Vol. I, pg. 12-19

CHAPTER II
SURVEY OF LANDMARKS

Historically West Virginia occupies a unique place among the Amer-
ican commonwealths, and at the same time it has a history which in
many ways illustrates the larger life of the nation with which it has
an intimate connection at many points.

Its earliest settlements along the Potomac above the mouth of the
Shenandoah, possibly as early as 1726, were encouraged by the Old
Dominion partly as a protection of older settlements against the Indians.
Its trans-Allegheny territory, under the early claims of the Old Dominion
largely controlled the upper Ohio which was the key to the West in the
final Anglo-French struggle for control. Its early frontiersmen, plain
and self-reliant - the forerunners of a mighty tide of immigration far
greater in energy than in numbers which burst the barriers of the Alle-
ghanies - formed the rear guard of the Revolution and the flying
squadron of the nation.

Along its borders or across its wings or on routes across its interior,
it felt the pulse of the mighty westward movement. "The early emigra-
tion which passed by the West Virginia hills and valleys and moved on
west where land was level and the prairies treeless, threw away opportu-
nities which some of their grandchildren are now returning to take at an
increased cost of a thousand per cent."

West Virginia is the only state formed as a result of the sectionalism
which existed in every state crossed by the Appalachians. It is the only
case in which the sectional history within every state with an Appalachian
frontier reached its logical result.

Its destiny to form a separate state was partly determined by its
topography and the direction of the flow of its rivers, and partly by
the character of its people. Its political destiny was greatly influenced
by the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad which opened a
market and began a new era of development, and besides facilitating
travel was a large factor in the military strategy of the Civil War and
the continued integrity of the American Union.

In the Civil War its destiny was closely related to the problem of
preserving the integrity of the American Union. It has a strategic
position of unusual importance, especially in relation to connections be-
tween the Middle West and the capitol at Washington. At the beginning
of the war, its loyalty to the Union prevented Lee from establishing
along the borders of Ohio and Pennsylvania the main Confederate
battle line of defense. Later, through the importance of the Baltimore
and Ohio railroad, it helped to control the strategy of campaigns both
in the East and in the Middle South. Its destiny largely determined
the question of suitable facilities for transportation of troops and sup-
plies between East and Middle West by the most direct route.

In the work of re-enfranchisement of Confederates after the Civil
War, West Virginia occupies a peculiar place. She accomplished through
two parties what in other states had been accomplished by one party - 
a complete removal of suffrage disabilities imposed for participation in
the secession movement against the Union. The work, instituted by the
liberal wing of one party, was carried to completion by the other.

Two centuries ago the region of the eastern panhandle first felt the
touch of civilization, largely through migrations from the occupied val-
leys of Pennsylvania, southeastward across Maryland via Frederick on
the historic route which continued up the Shenandoah and beyond its
headwaters through passes to the trans-Allegheny West.

Naturally the region between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies
was settled before the region beyond the formidable Allegheny barrier.
But the occupation of the one led to the mastery of the barrier and to
the occupation of the other territory whose rivers formed another drain-
age system.

The early events of the history of Virginia's transmontane history,
although they probably attracted little attention at the time, and were
scarcely understood in their larger significance even by participants,
were important in their relations to the future problems in the estab-
lishment and growth of the nation.

The story of the exploration, settlement and development of the
trans-Appalachian region constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters
of American history. Its beginnings are filled with thrilling incidents in
relation to Indians, who, although they did not have their home in
the region between the Alleghenies and the Ohio when white men came
to occupy it, long continued to visit it on excursions (incursions) from
their tribal camps west of the Ohio. Prominent in the pioneer work of
establishing the new frontier were the Scotch Irish. Led by Virginians
who were inspired by the movement of settlement which advanced west-
ward from the Shenandoah to the South Branch, and coincident with
the growth of population in the region which was almost ready to become
Hampshire county, they took the initiative which precipitated the great
Anglo-French struggle for a continent - a struggle which began by
collisions between the frontiersmen of rival nations along the upper
Ohio and settled the national destiny of the West. At the close of the
struggle, from which they emerged with a new stimulus born of victory,
and with a determination unrestrained by proclamations of the King or
the colonial governor, they advanced from the ease and security of
older settlements into the trans-Allegheny wilds, steadily pushed back
the frontier and the Indians, and in the heart of the wilderness estab-
lished their homes on many streams whose fate had recently hung in
the balance. Here, they turned to the conquest and subjugation of
the primeval forest which the Indians had sought to retain unconquered.
Although a mere handful of riflemen, they served as the immovable
rear guard of the Revolution, securely holding the mountain passes
and beating back the rear assaults of savage bands which might other-
wise have carried torch and tomahawk to the seaboard settlements. At
the same time they served as the advance guard of western civilization
hewing out paths across the mountain barrier and experimenting with
the difficulties and opportunities of the wilderness.

The story of the settlement of every early community is full of the
heroic deeds of these plain, modest, uncelebrated men of the struggling
common people - men who sought no praise and achieved no great
fame, who were not conscious of their own greatness, but who were
always ready for any service which was needed to maintain an advanc-
ing frontier. Out of many springs among the hills emerged at last
the irresistible current of their strength. They toiled not in vain.
While building homes in the wilderness, far from the tidewater East
against which they were later forced to struggle for political and social
rights, they were raising the framework of a self-governing state des-
tined to play an important part in the history of the nation.

The new inducements to settlement, increasing after the battle of
Point Pleasant in 1774, and receiving a new stimulus at the close of
the Revolution, produced a rapid expansion movement which resulted
by 1790 in a total trans-Allegheny population of over 50,000 people
widely separated into many detached, isolated local groups, intensely
individualistic in spirit, and with frontier conditions which, in the
absence of transportation facilities to develop the vast resources of
the region, were little fitted to develop unity of action or co-operation.

In several sections the means of communication with the world de-
veloped earlier than one might expect under frontier conditions. Be-
fore 1790 steps had been taken to widen the chief pack-horse trails
from the East into wagon roads. By 1786 a state road was opened
from Winchester via Romney to Morgantown, and by legislative act
of 1786 a branch wagon road was authorized from a point on the
Morgantown road near Cheat. As early as 1788, the trail from Win-
chester via St. George and Philippi to Clarksburg was called a "state
road," although still only the "Pringle Pack road." In 1789 a road
was opened westward from Clarksburg to the Ohio opposite Marietta.
In 1791 (by authority of an act of 1786) an extension of the Morgan-
town road was opened from Morgantown to the mouth of Fishing creek
(now New Martinsville). An extension from Morgantown to the mouth
of Graves creek was authorized in 1795. About 1790, by act of 1785,
the old Kanawha trail westward from Lewisburg to the navigable waters
of the Kanawha was widened for wagons and by 1800 a state road,
located along the general route of the old trail, was opened to the Ohio.
By 1797 there were in the territory later formed into West Virginia
eight postoffices, of which four were located east of the Alleghenies (at
Martinsburg, Shepherdstown, Romney, and Moorefield). Communica-
tion of trans-Allegheny Virginia with the East and the world was
facilitated by the creation of postoffices at Morgantown and at Wheel-
ing in 1794 (six years later than Pittsburgh), at Greenbrier Court
House and West Liberty by 1797, at Clarksburg in 1798, at Union in
1800 and at Charleston in 1801. The first post road to Morgantown,
excepting a post route established by the Pittsburgh Gazette in 1793,
was opened in 1794 from Hagerstown, Maryland via Hancock and
Cumberland, and continued from Morgantown to Uniontown (Pennsyl-
vania) and Brownsville (Pennsylvania). About the same time, a post
road was opened from Morgantown across southwestern Pennsylvania
to Wheeling.

By 1795 mail boats on the Ohio were carrying mail between Wheel-
ing and Cincinnati and after 1796 additional facilities for communica-
tion with the West were secured by a land route known as Zane's Trace,
via Zanesville, Lancaster and Chillicothe, Ohio, to the Ohio at Lime-
stone, Kentucky, (now Maysville). Probably the next mail route from
the East was opened in 1798 via Gandy's (in Preston county) to
Clarksburg and later continued via Salem to Marietta, Athens and
Chillicothe. By 1801 another horseback route was established from
Lewisburg to Charleston. It was extended westward from Charleston
to Scioto Salt Works by 1804 and to Chillicothe by 1807.

In the transmontane region the first local newspapers appeared quite
early - only fourteen years after the establishment of the first local
paper in the older settled region of the Potomac. The oldest paper
within the limits of the state was the Potomac Guardian and Berkeley
Advertiser, started at Martinsburg in 1789, and not as large as its
title might suggest. In the Monongahela valley the first paper, the
Monongalia Gazette was established at Morgantown in 1803 eighteen
years after the establishment of the Pittsburgh Gazette and six years
after the founding of the Fayette Gazette at Uniontown, Pennsylvania,
and four years after the appearance of the Martinsburg Gazette (the
second newspaper established in the eastern panhandle). The second
paper in the Monongahela valley, the Bystander was started at Clarks-
burg in 1810. The first local paper at Wheeling, the Repository, was
published in 1807, seven years before the appearance of a local paper
at Wellsburg (the Charlestown Gazette). In the Kanawha, the first
paper (the Spectator) appeared considerably later - in 1818 or 1819.
Although the majority of the periodical publications which were started
in West Virginia before the civil war were ephemeral the number
in existence in 1860 (according to Virgil A. Lewis) was forty-three - 
including three Wheeling dailies.

Gradually, with the extension of agricultural clearings made by
steady and laborious work aided by axe and fire, there emerged the
larger problems of improvements in communication, transportation, and
industry, accompanied by an increase of refinement and culture and
a growing sectional opposition against the political domination of tide-
water Virginia. An era of larger industrial development, foreshadowed
by the construction of several turnpikes from the East to the Ohio, was
begun by the completion of the first railroad to the Ohio early in 1853
after a series of triumphs over the difficulties of the mountains.

The work of constructing these roads brought to the region new
elements of population which had a large influence on the later develop-
ment of the state.

Considering the different elements of population, different features
of territory, and different interests, the formation of the new state by
separation from the mother state (suggested even in the revolutionary
period under conditions which gave birth to Kentucky), was the
logical and inevitable result of the half century of sectional con-
troversy between East and West in regard to inequalities under the
constitution of 1776. These inequalities were only partially remedied
by the constitutional conventions of 1829-30 and 1850-51 - although the
latter made large democratic departures from the earlier dominating
influences of the tidewater aristocracy in the government, illustrated
by the change from appointment to election of state and county officers.
The secession of Virginia from the Union only furnished the occasion
and the opportunity to accomplish by legal fiction and revolutionary
process an act toward which nature and experience had already indi-
cated and prepared the way.

The first steps toward separation of western Virginia from the mother
state were taken by the irregular Wheeling convention of May 13, 1861,
(composed of 425 delegates from 25 counties), ten days before the elec-
tion in which the western counties decided against secession by vote of
40,000 to 4,000. A second irregular convention, which met June 11,
nullified the Virginia ordinance of secession, vacated the offices of the
state government at Richmond, formed the "Reorganized" government
of Virginia, elected F. H. Pierpont to act as governor; and, two months
later (August 20), made provisions for a popular vote on the forma-
tion of a new state, and for a third convention to frame a constitution.
Members of the legislature elected from the western counties met at
Wheeling on July 1, and, calling themselves the Virginia legislature,
proceeded to fill the remainder of the state offices. After organizing
the state government, they selected two United States senators who
were promptly recognized at Washington as senators from Virginia.

The popular election of October 24 resulted in a vote of 18,489 to
781 in favor of the new state. A third convention, in which forty-one
counties were represented, met at Wheeling on November 26; and, on
February 18, 1862, it completed a constitution which was ratified early
in April by a vote of 18,162 to 514.

The new state, erected by consent of the "Reorganized" govern-
ment of Virginia (representing forty-eight western counties) and by
the consent of Congress, revised its constitution (February, 1863) to
meet the conditions of Congress requiring gradual abolition of slavery,
and under the President's proclamation of April 20 was admitted to
the Union on June 20, 1863.

In the crisis in which the state was born there were serious sectional
differences. The strong sympathy for the Confederacy in the southern
and eastern sections resulted in a sad state of disorder - illustrated in
1864 by the governor's report that in the extreme southern counties it
was still impracticable to organize civil authority, and that in fourteen
counties there were no sheriffs or other collectors of taxes "because of
the danger incident thereto."

Even at the close of the war the new state was confronted by various
conditions which seriously threatened its integrity and independence.
In 1866, it rejected the overtures of Virginia for reunion and secured the
recognition of Congress in favor of its claim to Berkeley and Jeffer-
son counties, which had been annexed in 1863 by legal forms and were
finally awarded by decision of the United States supreme court in 1871.

The new state inherited from Virginia a boundary dispute with
Maryland which was not settled until 1912, and it soon became involved
with Virginia in a debt dispute which was partially decided by the
supreme court of the United States in 1911 and finally settled by a
decision of 1915 resulting in a judgment against "West Virginia for
nearly $12,100,000.

Beginning its existence without a permanent capital, without any
of the usual state institutions, excepting a lunatic asylum, and with-
out proper executive agencies to secure the general welfare, the state
promptly turned to solve the problems of its institutional and social
needs, including the establishment of a system of public schools, normal
schools and a state university. Executive agencies for inspection and
regulation were developed rather slowly.

The struggle against obstacles interposed by nature and against
difficulties resulting from sectional differences and policies was a long
one requiring persistent effort and energy.

The first period of reconstruction closed with a victory of the Demo-
crats in 1870, and the adoption of a new constitution in 1872. For
over a quarter century the Democrats retained political control, al-
though their majority steadily declined after 1880 and became a minority
in 1896. Sectional divergences disappeared in the growing unity result-
ing from industrial integration and the expansion of improved com-
munication.

The political revolution could not check the steadily growing eco-
nomic revolution, which since 1872 has largely changed the industrial
and social character of the state. The largest chapter in the history
of the state is that relating to the great industrial awakening, which
had its origin largely in the increasing demand for timber, coal, oil and
gas, and was especially influenced by inducements for the construction
of railroads and for the establishment of certain manufacturers for which
a portion of the state furnishes a clean, cheap fuel. Almost every county
felt the effects of the great transformation resulting from the exten-
sion of transportation facilities, the arrival of many immigrants from
neighboring states and from foreign countries, and the opening of new
industries which have precipitated a series of new problems not yet
solved.

The entire state has been changed, both in conditions of life and
habits of the people. Its development in material wealth in the last
decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the
twentieth century, far exceeding all expectations, has surprised the
world. Industrial development has largely been due to construction
of railroads which now parallel all the chief rivers and connect all the
chief industrial sections with great industrial centers outside of the
state. It has also been encouraged by improvement of waterways.
Lumbering and associated industries have had a large influence upon
changes in the condition of life in several parts of the state. Manufac-
turing from feeble beginnings became one of the most important in-
dustries. Agriculture has passed from the stage of mere subsistence
to that of business production for the markets. Fruit growing in
recent years has made a remarkable advance, both in methods and in
increase of production.

The organized development of the petroleum industry in West Vir-
ginia, including the evolution of boring the wells and improvements
for storage and transportation of the product is full of interest and
one of the most instructive chapters in American industrial history.
With it is associated the equally interesting story of natural gas develop-
ment which became active after beginning of systematic search in 1882
and after 1906 gave West Virginia first rank among all the states in
gas production - a rank which was retained until 1914 when Oklahoma
captured it.

Coal mining which had scarcely begun before the civil war has
steadily increased in activity since the nineties and has been the chief
basis of great changes in community life - especially in the southern
part of the state and along the Monongahela. The increasing impor-
tance of the coal industry after 1888 indicated the need of state regula-
tory legislation which was begun in 1890 by the creation of the office
of chief mine inspector and continued later by new provisions for pro-
tection against mine explosions and for improvement of mining condi-
tions. In coal production the state reached second rank in the United
States in 1909, but temporarily fell back to third in 1920.

The days of great achievement apparently have not ended. A great
resource of water-power has scarcely been touched. Another resource,
the natural scenery of the state, which has been poorly appreciated at
home and not enough known elsewhere, has recently become a greater
source of enjoyment, and, with the extension of good roads, is becoming
more and more a source of profit through increasing travel and exten-
sion of summer resorts.

As a result of the development of vast resources, especially coal and
oil, the character of the population has greatly changed by a larger
influx, first from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, and later
from Europe, and the opportunities for moral and intellectual develop-
ment have greatly increased.

In the orderly development of the early communities of the western
wilds, in the maintenance of proper social and moral standards in
neighborhood life, in the continued growth of moral and spiritual ideals
both in the earlier periods of isolation and struggle for subsistence and
in the recent years of railway facilities and material wealth, the church
and the faith of the fathers have been prominent civilizing factors.
The various church organizations, although they long struggled against
poverty, have grown in material wealth, and have improved both in
doctrine and in usefulness.

The development of the state educationally in two decades has at-
tracted the attention of other states, and in some instances has fur-
nished examples of special features which have been adopted elsewhere.
The development of high schools was a prominent feature after 1909.
At the University, in the decade from 1909-10 to 1919-20, the enroll-
ment of candidates for degrees increased from 800 to 1,596, and the
total enrollment increased from 1,200 to 2,800 (or to 1,992 exclusive of
short course students).

In recent years citizens of the state have given some attention to
problems of economy and conservation, the importance of which has
finally been impressed upon them by the evils resulting from the long
period of exploitation and waste. Gradually, and more rapidly in
recent years the state has extended its functions of inspection and
regulation in response to necessities arising from new conditions.

A study of the long struggle for the possession and settlement of
the trans-Allegheny region now included in West Virginia, the efforts
to obtain communication with the larger world, the sources of widening
sectional differences which prepared the way for the formation of a
separate state for which the civil war furnished the occasion, the social
and political problems which confronted the new state in the period of
reconstruction after the war, and the factors and rapidly changing
conditions of the recent industrial revolution impresses one with the
fact that earlier ideals and earlier problems of government have greatly
changed.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the self-reliant pioneers who served
as the rear guard of the Revolution or as the advance guard of the Re-
public, to the later patriots who founded the mountain state with its
eastern arm stretched out in defense of the national capital, and to the
pioneers of the recent industrial development who, with foresight and
confidence, and at great initial cost, opened the way to new enterprise.
They toiled not in vain. The result of their work is our valuable
heritage.

We owe also a duty to the present and to the future. If we have
the spirit of the fathers we shall not allow blind veneration of the crys-
tallized results of old issues, nor adherence to mere forms and meaning-
less shibboleths, nor the invidious and menacing ways of invisible lob-
bies of predatory interests, to block our progress in meeting the vital
issues of a new age.

A deep realization of the struggle by which we obtained our liberties
and our institutions is the firmest basis for a true patriotism and good
citizenship, which finds its expression not in glittering generalities, but
in an earnest effort to aid in the proper adjustment of wrong condi-
tions and the solution of pressing problems. Revering the fathers, who
in face of dangers paved the way for our liberties and our prosperity,
we must also be alert to understand present duties. The experience of
the past has shown that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and that
a constant and intelligent interest and participation in public affairs is
the surest safeguard to the preservation of self government.

The people of each generation have some new issues to meet. Those
of the present, still maintaining what the fathers won, are struggling
to secure social and industrial justice by righteous adjustments of evils
which under changed conditions have resulted from the exploitive and
wasteful race for riches in a period dominated by great (and often non-
resident) captains of industry into whose hands the supply of natural
resources have rapidly been absorbed without a fair return for the sup-
port of institutions which will be needed by the people long after the
larger part of the wealth of forest and mine has been removed. In this
period the early pioneer ideals of squatter sovereignty and the unregu-
lated exploitation of "development" have broken down, and by force
of necessity are being replaced by the more recent ideal of social control
through regulation by law - to secure the general welfare by placing
restrictions on modern industrial captains and the rapacious industrial
wolves and sharks and promoters of frenzied finance whose economic
and political ideals have produced anomalous conditions for which the
highest political intelligence of the state is urged to find and apply a
remedy.

In seeking a defense for its continued existence, the new democracy
can find it in the ability to secure the execution of an enlightened
opinion through officials with functions adequate to grapple with exist-
ing conditions. It must secure legislation to curtail the special privi-
leges of the strong, to protect the weak from injustice and inequalities,
and to guard the interests of all. It must seek to make law the mother
of freedom for all, maintaining a definite minimum of civilized life in
the interest of the community (as well as the individual), a minimum
of sanitation (and protection from accidents and frauds), a minimum of
education, a minimum of leisure and of subsistence, and a minimum
of efficiency in local governing bodies. It must select leaders with high
standards of practical government and honest politics, with high and
broad ideals of what constitutes service to the state, and with a dominant
standard of success higher than the mere amassing of great wealth for
the aggrandizement of the individual regardless of the conditions of
its cost or of the civilization which results.

The great problems are no longer the appropriation and exploita-
tion of natural resources such as confronted the solitary backwoods-
man sinking his axe into the edge of a measureless forest. The earlier
pioneer ideals, determined by experience under frontier conditions and
followed by those who laid the foundations of the state - ideals of con-
quest and personal development unrestricted by social and governmental
restraint - have recently been modified greatly by the changed economic
and social conditions of an era dominated by triumphant captains of
industry who regard themselves simply as pioneers of a new era chop-
ping new clearings for larger business, seizing new strategic positions
for power sites or dam sites, and opening the way to new enterprises.
They have broken down everywhere in the larger competitions and
struggles terminating in cannibalistic absorptions, and in trust forma-
tions to fight new industrial battles. The new conditions, born of the
struggles of a past whose life has almost vanished, have brought new
problems which must be met and solved by new struggles - through
methods of investigation, education and legislation. "It is only through
labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage that we
move on to better things."

The pioneer clearing is broadening into a field in which all that is
worthy of human endeavor may find a fertile soil to grow; and the new
democracy, through law and government, is beginning to exact from
the constructive geniuses, who sprang from the loins of pioneer democ-
racy, a supreme allegiance and devotion to the common weal. The
people of the state, with increasing determination to preserve the heri-
tage which remains, have begun to initiate proper legislation to restrict
the evils of an era of unregulated exploitation, often under non-resident
management, which has subordinated public welfare to private greed.

"The future holds great promise and also grave responsibility for
the wise and conservative solution of far-reaching economic problems."

The past, although dead and gone if considered as a series of isolated
events, is still living and with us in the reservoired results of evolutions
marked by series of connected events. The past lives in the present and
is the guide to the future. Past experience is the best light to guide our
feet in the next forward step.