Parkersburg, West Virginia

“ The Negro schools could then be turned over to teachers of the race who, having availed themselves of the opportunities for education, had become equipped for service among their own people. With the further organization of the public school system of Parkersburg, the Negro school was brought under the direction of the local superintendent of schools and given the same sort of instruction and inspection as that provided for the white schools. ”

“ At this time there was a certain stigma attached to the idea of educating one's children at the expense of others or at the expense of the commonwealth. Persons able to pay for the instruction of their children were, therefore, willing to do so that they might not have a reputation for dependency or delinquency. [6]
The teachers first employed in Parkersburg were Sarah Trotter and Pocahontas Simmons, persons of color and Rev. S. E. Colburn, a white man. The number of pupils enrolled in the first year approached forty. ”

“ They will live on half salary, and whine about it all year, rather than get out and look up additional territory. [51] Under fair conditions, the young man who is devout and active can secure a good living on any field. Faith and purpose and push will win every time. The year closed with fifty-three members, and ninety-five in the Sunday school.
The conference again convened in Parkersburg, with David Edwards this time as bishop—the last session he ever presided over.
At this period the battle in the Church over the secrecy question was waxing warm. ”

“ To be a presiding elder in the Parkersburg Conference means to travel over a large territory, and to do a vast amount of hard work on small pay; but all this is nothing compared with some other things that we have to endure. It is no uncommon thing in this country for a presiding elder to make a failure in the pulpit because of some circumstance, or a combination of circumstances over which he can have but little or no control.
“Many of the houses in which we worship are by far too small to accommodate the congregations that generally gather on quarterly meeting occasion. ”

“ These Federal parts of two Confederate States formed a wedge dangerous to the whole South, especially to Virginia and the Carolinas. Each side therefore tried to control this area itself. The Federals, under McClellan, of whom we shall Page 30 soon hear more, had two lines of invasion into West Virginia, both based on the Ohio. The northern converged by rail, from Wheeling and Parkersburg, on Grafton, the only junction in West Virginia. The southern ran up the Great Kanawha, with good navigation to Charleston and water enough for small craft on to Gauley Bridge, which was the strategic point. ”

“ Those who went to Pennsylvania received grants of land in the western mountain region. The policy of the government was to interpose them as a buffer between the expanding colony and the Indian frontier. Once planted in the Alleghany region, they spread rapidly and in large numbers toward the southwest along the mountain country through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Carolinas. At a later time they formed almost the entire population of West Virginia, and they were the men who chiefly built up the commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee. ”

“ When women met together there was talk only of "ways and 413 means," the best to be done under the new order of things.
In 1866 the state was under Federal government. Francis H. Pierpont, who had been Governor of West Virginia, assumed executive authority. In 1867 Virginia was placed under military government, and in the winter of that year a convention was held which framed a new constitution. This was submitted in 1869 to the people, and was adopted by a large majority. Gilbert C. Walker, a native of New York and a resident of Virginia, was elected Governor ”

“ The general shape is that of an oval, 210 miles long from southwest to northeast and 125 miles wide, but two narrow tongues extend northward between Pennsylvania and Ohio and northeastward between Virginia and Maryland, each of them being known as ‘panhandles.’ The area of the State is 24,780 square miles, making it thirty-seventh in size among the States.
Topography. The surface of West Virginia is, as a whole, uneven, and in the east mountainous. The main range of the Alleghanies crosses the northeastern section, and farther south forms the State boundary toward Virginia. ”

“ On the day after its completed organization it was ordered to Clarksburg, W. Va., which place was then threatened by a force under the Rebel General, Jenkins, who was then on a raid through West Virginia. Clarksburg is an old town, the county seat of Harrison County, situated on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and distant by rail 122 miles from Wheeling. Clarksburg will be remembered by the great abundance, in its vicinity, of blackberries during the early fall of that year. They were so plentiful that there seemed to be enough for the Twelfth and the citizens of the town, too. ”

“ Because of the small Negro population in this town, however, this school has not rapidly developed, although the work of the teachers employed there has been efficient, as has been evidenced by their well-prepared eighth-grade students who have done excellently in more advanced schools. [18]
A little farther north, in Wheeling in Ohio County, Negro education had a better opportunity. Wheeling is geographically a part of Pennsylvania, and its attitude toward education has been determined to a large extent by the impetus given the cause in that progressive commonwealth. ”

“ At the various towns, the railroads come out from the mountain regions of West Virginia, bringing the bituminous coal for shipment. Ninety-four miles below Pittsburg is Wheeling, the metropolis of West Virginia, a busy manufacturing city of forty thousand people. Farther down, in the midst of the flats adjoining the river, at Moundsville, is the great Indian Mound, a relic of the prehistoric inhabitants of this region standing up eighty feet high and being eight hundred and twenty feet in circumference at the base. ”

“ The loyal determination was rapidly followed by popular organization, an appeal for assistance was made to the government at Washington, who promised them countenance and support, and on the 13th day of May, delegates from twenty-five counties of West Virginia met at Wheeling, to devise such action as would enable them to fully and finally repudiate the treasonable revolt of East Virginia. ”

“ In 1890-1900 and 1900-1910 the increase in population was more than one fourth. Of the total population in 1900, 97.7% was native-born, 892,854 were native whites, 43,499 were negroes, 56 were Chinese and 12 were Indians. Of the inhabitants born in the United States 61,508 were natives of Virginia, 40,301 of Ohio, 28,927 of Pennsylvania and 10,867 of Kentucky ”

“ IV. The traveller crossing the continent in a Pullman car is convinced that West Virginia is one continuous mountain. He has no desire to do other than to hurry past with all the rapidity of which the iron horse is capable. He can have no idea that in its central portion is a stretch of rolling blue-grass country, as fertile and as valuable as the stock-farm lands of Kentucky; with a civilization, too, distinctly its own, and not to be met with in any other country of the world. ”

“ If a majority of the votes given at the polls opened and held pursuant to this act be in favor of the said county of Berkeley becoming part of the State of West Virginia, then shall the said county become part of the State of West Virginia when admitted into the same with the consent of the legislature thereof. ”

“ The town, situated on the falls of the James River, enjoyed the distinction of being the seat of government of a commonwealth which, despite the loss of Kentucky, still extended from the Atlantic coast to the Ohio River and included the present West Virginia. It ranked as one of the important cities of the young nation along with Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, South Carolina. ”

“ Some delegates favoured the immediate formation of a new state, but the more far-sighted members argued that as the ordinance had not yet been voted upon by the people, and Virginia was still in the Union, such action would be revolutionary, since the United States Constitution provides that no state may be divided without its consent. Therefore it was voted that in case the ordinance should be adopted (of which there was little doubt) another convention including the members-elect of the legislature should meet at Wheeling on the 11th of June. ”

“ This was the romantic tale, as related by a writer in The New York Sun:
"When a young man, he found to his amazement among his father's papers a deed to five thousand eight hundred and eighty-three acres of land, located in what is known as West Virginia. This deed was a great surprise to all who saw or heard of it. Putting [35] this deed in his pocket, young Palmore, the only heir to the property, made a trip to West Virginia, to look over his vast estate, which was far in the interior. ”

“ Towards the west were the Irish, of whom some were Celts, always quarrelling with their German neighbors, who detested them; but the greater part were Protestants of Scotch descent, from Ulster; a vigorous border population. Virginia and New England had each a strong distinctive character. Pennsylvania, with her heterogeneous population, had none but that which she owed to the sober neutral tints of Quaker existence. A more thriving colony there was not on the continent. Life, if monotonous, was smooth and contented. Trade and the arts grew. ”

“ The West Virginia Colored Orphans' Home near Huntington is not under state control, but has received appropriations from the legislature. In 1908 a law was enacted for establishing the West Virginia Children's Home to be under the control of the Humane Society.
Education.—Each magisterial district constitutes a school district and there are also a few independent school districts. For each school district there is a board of education consisting of a president and two commissioners, each elected for a term of four years, one commissioner every two years. ”

“ Union, in Monroe County, was not unlike the other large settlements of this section having considerable Negro population. There was at times even as early as 1855 a healthy sentiment in favor of the improvement of the few slaves there, and this was not lost after the Civil War had ended. So general was the interest in behalf of the Negroes that this proved to be a most favorable community. Union was one of the first towns in that section to establish a public school for Negroes. At first there was some difficulty in having well prepared Negro teachers in the county itself ”

“ The soils are all formed from local disintegration of the rocks. In the northeast they are sandy and of little fertility, but many of the mountains are covered to their summits with a fertile clayey soil, and the Ohio Valley in the west has a soil formed chiefly from limestone, which gives it great fertility. West Virginia is one of the most typical sections of the Appalachian floral region. ”

“ To this day only one in sixteen of the population of West Virginia is colored, and it is still largely native white, despite the coal mines, which in other regions have come to depend largely on the labor of Slavs. In the 10 per cent of its foreign-stock population West Virginia has a scattering of Slavs, as also of almost every other people, but the largest element is British, the next German. ”

“ It is enough to say that, with somewhat fluctuating changes, the rebels were gradually forced back from the Great [Pg 236] Kanawha Valley, and the eventual result left West Virginia in possession of the Federal troops, her own inherent loyalty having contributed largely in producing this condition. The Union sentiment of the people was everywhere made manifest, and the new State government was consolidated and heartily sustained, ending in her ultimate admission as a separate member of the Federal Union in June, 1863. ”

“ The period of Gooch’s government was remarkable for the development of the westward movement prefigured in Spotswood’s expedition across the Blue Ridge. This development occurred in a way that even far-seeing men could not have predicted. It introduced into Virginia a new set of people, new forms of religion, new habits of life. It affected all the colonies south of Pennsylvania most profoundly, and did more than anything else to determine the character of all the states afterward founded west of the Alleghanies and south of the latitude of middle Illinois. ”

“ During the war an unusually large part of the population was in arms, and 32,068 men were furnished to the Federal Army. Slavery was entirely abolished February 3, 1865, in advance of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The return of the Confederate soldiers to the southern and eastern counties threatened the Republican control, and in 1866 an amendment was added to the Constitution disfranchising all who had given aid and comfort to the Confederacy after June, 1861. ”

“ A commodious building of brick and sandstone, unchristened as to style of architecture, has been erected for the home of the law-makers; and henceforth the city which started around the little log fort built in 1786 by George Glendermon to afford protection against Indians will be the seat of government for the great unfenced State of West Virginia. Its business enterprise and thrift, its excellent geographical and commercial position, its healthiness notwithstanding its bad drainage, or rather no drainage, have induced a growth almost phenomenal. ”