Wednesday, June 20 is West Virginia Day, when in 1863 the hard-working family farmers in the 39 Virginia counties in the western part of the state decided they had had enough of the snooty plantation slaveholders and became their own state.

The two sides were separated by the Alleghenies and the future state motto, “Mountaineers Are Always Free,” in contrast to Virginia’s slavery legacy.

The first choice for the new state’s name was Kanawha, to honor the tribe of the same name which already had a river named for it. 

Vandalia also got some consideration because that was the late 1700s name of a British colony what encompassed what today includes West Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana.

But in the 1862 constitution, the founders settled on West Virginia. And the confusion among those not from West Virginia continues to this day that Richmond and Morgantown are not in the same state.

The day had been celebrated informally for decades before the West Virginia Legislature made it a formal holiday in 1927.

Wheeling, where the separation held its first meetings, was the first state capital. 

In 1870, the capital shifted to Charleston, but returned to Wheeling in 1875. 

At a statewide vote in 1877, Wheeling was not among the choices and voters selected Charleston over Martinsburg and Clarksburg and the capital moved to its permanent home in 1885. It wasn’t the first time folks west of the Alleghenies wanted nothing to do with the looking-down-their-noses aristocrats east of the mountains. 

In 1775 the Continental Congress was petitioned unsuccessfully to create Westsylvania from parts of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. 

In 1783 the Continental Congress turned down an attempt to make Westsylvania the 14^th state with much of the territory that would have been in the Vandalia colony.

West Virginia was the birthplace of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) to the widespread farms.

Free and West Virginia have been synonymous for a long time.