West Virginia birthday video

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

· June 20 at 6:39am ·

Happy 154th Birthday, West Virginia!

1863 - West Virginia Becomes the 35th State.

From the earliest days of settlement there were differences between Eastern has Western Virginia. Legislation often favored those in the East, who owned slave and land.

The American Civil War brought these issues to a head. When the Virginia legislature voted to secede from the Union in 1861, delegates from western counties walked out and went on to form a pro-Union government based in Wheeling.

As the Civil War turned for the Union, the state of West Virginia was created on June 20, 1863.

If you want to watch the Public Broadcasting video of West Virginia’s 1863 birthday as a state, click on https://www.facebook.com/WVPublic/videos/10154551650496471/

 

 

West Virginia in top 5 in World War II service

West Virginia was 5^th in the percentage of servicemen serving during World War II.

218,665 West Virginians, including 66,716 volunteers, were in the armed forces.

5,830 West Virginians were killed during World War II.

Big disasters in little towns in West Virginia

Monongah made a list that no one wants to be on: 11 Tiny Towns In West Virginia Where HUGE Disasters Happened, as collected by Katherine on the onlyinyourstate.com web site.

She left out some mining disasters because, in West Virginia, that is a long list by itself.

1. Eccles, population 362

Eccles is the site of a mining disaster that took the lives of 180 men on April 28, 1914. It’s the second-worst mining disaster in the state’s history.

2. Shinnston, population 2,201

Shinnston is the site of the deadliest tornado in West Virginia history. The storm, on June 23, 1944 killed 66 people in the town and surrounding area. In total, 103 people were killed and 430 were seriously injured.

3. Kenova, population 3,216

A hillside in Kenova was the crash site of a plane carrying the 1970 Marshall University football team. The crash happened as the team was returning from a game on Nov. 14, 1970 on a hillside just short of Tri-State Airport. All 75 people aboard were killed.

4. Matewan, population 499

Matewan was the site of a 1920 shootout between local miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. The incident is referred to as the Battle of Matewan or the Matewan Massacre. Ten people were killed during the incident, including two miners, the mayor, and seven from the Bald-Felts agency.

5. Benwood, population 1,420

Benwood was around 1,400 people at last count and it was also the site of a huge mining disaster in 1924. The Benwood Mine explosion claimed the lives of 119 coal miners. There were no survivors. It’s the third-worst coal disaster in state history. The blast was reportedly caused by the ignition of methane gas and coal dust and occurred at around 7:05 a.m., about a half-hour after the morning shift of miners started work.

6. Mount Hope, population 1,414

Mount Hope, in Fayette County, was the site of a devastating fire that demolished the town in 5 hours. The fire happened March 24, 1910. Among the burned buildings were the town’s high school, a hotel, businesses and many houses. According to news reports from the time, the town had a population of nearly 600 and after the blaze, 500 were left homeless.

7. Monongah, population 1,044

Monongah is the site of the worst mining disaster in American history. On December 6, 1907, an explosion at the mine killed 362 people. Most of the men died instantly.

8. Farmington, population 375

A mine disaster on Nov. 20, 1968 killed 78 miners. The explosion at the mine was so big that it was felt almost 12 miles away in Fairmont. The accident was a catalyst for several laws that were passed to protect miners.

9. Bartley, population 224

Bartley,  in McDowell County, is the site of one of the deadliest mine disasters in the country’s history. The Pond Creek #1 mine exploded on Jan. 10, 1940 and 91 miners died. The cause of the blast was determined to be a gas pocket that had built up and was ignited by a spark.

10. Belmont, population 903

Belmont is the closest city to Willow Island, an unincorporated place that was the site of the Willow Island disaster. In 1978, a cooling tower under construction at a power station collapsed and killed 51 workers, in what is thought to be the biggest construction accident in the country’s history.

11. Ripley, population 3,252

Ripley, in Jackson County, was the site of the last public hanging in the state. In 1897, John Morgan was hanged for murder. About 5,000 people came to the event, which was written about in a national newspaper. The spectacle caused the state legislature to outlaw public executions not long after.

Historic moment in West Virginia

Thomas Alva Edison, Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., John Burroughs, Henry Ford, Harvey S. Firestone and R.J.H. de Loach on one of their annual camping trips.

Edison invented the electric light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture camera and electric power stations among his 1,093 patents. The Dazzling Dutchman was born in Milan, Ohio. Papa had to escape Canada after taking part in the failed 1837 Mackenzie Rebellion.

Firestone, born in Columbiana, Ohio, founded Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. His 3xgreat-grandfather, Nicholas Hans Feuerstein, came to America from France. As with many immigrants, the name morphed, into Firestone.

Ford founded the Ford Motor Company, which perfected the assembly line for building automobiles. Ford, son of an Irish immigrant, was born in Greenfield Township, Michigan, which was absorbed into Detroit by 1926.

Burroughs was a conservationist born on a Catskill Mountains farm near Roxbury, New York who became a federal bank examiner and a close friend of poet Walt Whitman.

Robert John Henderson de Loach, a professor at Georgia State Teachers College in Statesboro, is the author of “Rambles With John Burroughs,” “Progressive Sheep Raising” and “On Cotton Cultivation.”

The group in 1918 toured West Virgina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountains.

This was an annual camping trip, interrupted only in 1917 because of World War I, misnamed “the war to end all wars.”

Quite a blast from the past, I would say.

Years that West Virginia counties were born

Hampshire (1753) and Berkeley (1772) were formed as part of The Colonies, before there became a United States of America in 1776.

Marion County was formed in 1842, carved from Monongalia and Harrison counties. That was two decades before the Civil War (1861-65).

Nature did what the McCoys never could to Devil Anse, in the casket in 1921

Violent feud, natural death

Despite the Hatfield-McCoy feud killings, on January 6, 1921, Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield died of pneumonia at his Island Creek home in Logan County.

He was one of the leaders of the historic feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families in the mountains of West Virginia and northern Kentucky. Shot at from ambush and in hand-to-hand combat scores of times with the McCoys, he had always predicted he would live to die a natural death, as he did at the age of 80.

He spent the last 15 years of his life quietly and peaceably on a small farm he owned in Logan County near the cabin where he was born.

When federal agents were sent to Williamson, West Virginia to settle the feud, Hatfields and McCoys fired on them as they left the train. 

Neither side cottoned to outsiders interfering with family business.

There's a Hatfield-McCoy trail for hikers and bikers in Mingo County today. Much more tranquil than in the Hatfield-McCoy feud days.

Arthurdale FDR’s 1^st resettlement town in America

Reedsville Project, which became Arthurdale

Arthurdale, east of Morgantown, was the first FDR New Deal resettlement town built in the country. It was begun in 1934 as the Reedsville Project, but the name was changed to the man the government bought the land from, Richard Arthur.

Land was purchased, residents were selected, homes were constructed, more residents were selected, more homes constructed until there were 165 homes and several community buildings including a school complex, built on 1,200 acres in Preston County. 

Most of the buildings still stand and are part of the New Deal Homestead Museum.

Many of the new residents were displaced miners from the Scott’s Run area near Morgantown and government employees -- teachers, physicians, surveyors, engineers, secretaries.

The homesteaders were responsible for paying rent, working and farming their allotted acreage.

The federal government liquidated its holdings in Arthurdale in 1947, selling the homes and community buildings to private owners.

Later in 1934, another FDR community was built in what today is Eleanor, named after FDR’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, it began as the Red House Settlement in Daily, East Daily and Valley Bend.

Other FDR communities were built in Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

It was FDR’s attempt to build infrastructure, reduce unemployment and bolster the national economy. 

In that vein, he created the Works Progress Administration, which built the stone Fairview High gymnasium that hosted high school sectional basketball tournaments for years and dwarfed Monongah High’s bandbox gym, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided employment and a healthy outlet for teens and young adults while improving America’s parks and forests.

To read more about the Arthurdale project, click on http://www.arthurdaleheritage.org/history/