Marion County, West Virginia     History of Marion County, WV

    This file was submitted by N. L. Kotowski,
    E-mail address:  <Haddeleigh@aol.com>

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History of Marion County

Submitted by: N. L. Kotowski

Near the junction of the Tygart's Valley River and the West Fork centered
Marion county, whose development at the coming of the railroad had advanced
beyond that of Taylor--although its older settlements were probably made no
earlier than those of Taylor. By 1772 Captain James Booth and John Thomas
settled on Booth's Creek near the site of Boothsville, and David Morgan and
others at the mouth of Prickett's Creek, five miles below the site of
Fairmont. Their descendants form a considerable part of the population of the
county.
At the close of the Revolution many families settled in the vicinity of
Yellow Rock Ford on the West Fork, and west of the site of Fairmont. Others
followed in rapid succession. For the earliest settlements of this region
Morgantown and Clarksburg were marketing centres; but, with the increase of
improvements and the erection of mills along the streams, nearer stores were
established, and monthly communication with the outside world was later
secured by a regular mail route.

In 1819, Middletown (now Fairmont) was legally established and regularly
plotted in a laurel thicket on the farm of Boaz Fleming--the roughest and
poorest land in the vicinity. Its earliest development was partly determined
by the need of a midway stopping-place for travellers between Morgantown and
Clarksburg. Its later growth was due to the establishment of various
industries in the vicinity. In April, 1831, Barnes and Haymond announced
through the Monongalian, of Morgantown that they would begin fulling [sic]
and carding at Middletown Mills on May 1 and agreed to take grain at Thomas
Barnes' on Buffalo and Robert Lynn's mill on Tygart's.

In 1837 Rivesville was laid out upon the land of Elisha Snodgrass. In 1838,
across the river from Middletown, was established Palatine at which the
Marion machine works manufactured McCormick reapers a decade before the civil
war. In 1839 a town was plotted adjacent to the Boothsville post office which
had been established in 1833 at Robert Reed's tavern near the forks of
Booth's Creek. The first newspaper of the county was established at Fairmont
about 1840. Some of the smaller towns of the county are older than the
county, but the larger number were established after the arrival of the
railroad.

The attempt to secure the formation of a separate county in 1842,
twenty-three years after the plan had first been proprosed to the
legislature, was successful in spite of considerable opposition in the
legislature both from the delegates of Monongalia and those of Harrison. The
first county court met at the house of William Kerr, and later sessions were
held in the Methodist Church until the first court house was built. The early
court days were general trading days for the people of the surrounding
country--and by some were often regarded as convenient occasions for disputes
and fights. By 1845 Fairmont had seventy dwellings and five stores; and
Palatine across the river had twenty-five dwellings and two stores. In the
vicinity were located several flouring mills and other mills.

A decided increase in the population of the county began in 1849 through the
immigration which followed closely on the heels of the surveying engineers of
the Baltimore and Ohio. Some of the immigrants were Irish, fresh from the
bogs of Connaught and the lakes of Killarney, who carried with them all their
local feuds and prejudices which induced them to transfer their sectional
fighting from the old and to the land of greater freedom and opportunity. In
a locally famous riot, in which the Connaughters who were employed at
Benton's Ferry attacked the Fardowners at Ice's Mill and pursued them to
Fairmont in an exciting chase punctuated by occasional gun-shots and hideous
yells, the law abiding citizens of Fairmont proved themselves equal to the
occasion by arresting all accessible assailants, eighty-eight of whom they
placed in jail where they had an opportunity to study their first lessons in
Americanization.

The approaching railroad encouraged other activities which furnished other
incentives to industry and progress. These included the construction of three
turnpikes, each begun in 1849--one to Weston, another to Beverly, and another
to Fishing Creek. In February, 1850, the people were excited with delight by
the first arrival of a steamboat--the Globe--resulting in the subsequent
arrival of others which began to make regular trips in high water during
1852, and also producing local efforts to secure permanent navigation through
organization of the Monongahela Navigation Company, and attempts to interest
capitalists--efforts which failed largely through lack of sufficient
encouragement from the people of the county. A suspension bridge across the
river to Patatine [sic] was completed in April, 1852, and the completion of
the B. & O. from the East to Fairmont was celebrated on June 23 following. In
1853 a state stock bank was organized.

Rafting on the Monongahela to Pittsburgh and lower points which began as
early as 1840 continued until about 1890. A few years after the completion of
the B. & O. in 1852 much lumber cut by portable mills was shipped from
Fairmont, Mannington and Farmington.

Mannington, which receives its earliest stimulus from the construction of the
railroad, stands on the site of a clearing first made in 1786 at the fork of
Buffalo and Pyles Creek by Robert Rutherford of Winchester, Virginia, who
received from Governor Patrick Henry a patent for the lands on which he
settled. It is located near the old Indian trail made memorable by the Indian
attacks along Buffalo Creek in 1786 and 1787. Its houses were [sic] a
dwelling built by Wesley Clayton in 1843 and a tavern and store built by
Samuel Koon soon thereafter. By 1845, then known as Koontown, it became a
center for mercantile transactions. In 1852 it was renamed for James
Mannings, a civil engineer of the new railroad, and in 1856 it was
incorporated by the assembly. From 1853, it had a tannery and a good trade in
timber products and farm products.

Source:
Genealogical and Personal History of the UPPER MONONGAHELA VALLEY West
Virginia, vol. I, by James Morton Callahan, 1912