West Virginia timeline

By Luca Skødt Gago
  • Period: 1500 to

    Prehistory

    • Native Americans burned forests to clear land
    • Eastern Woodland tribes were involved in hunting, fishing and agriculture
    • Cultivated tobacco, used in numerous social and religious rituals
    • Corn only made a substantial contribution to the diet around 800 AD
    • Tribal villages began depending on corn to feed their turkey flocks.
    • Local natives made a flat rye bread called “bannock”
    • Trading posts were established by European traders along the Potomac and James rivers
  • Period: to

    Beaver Wars

    • Other tribes moved into the region
    • Iroquoian Tiontatecaga separated from the Petun
    • Settled between Kanawha and Little Kanawha rivers
    • Mingo Seneca were West Virginia’s last native tribe
    • Other tribes were chased out of Ohio
    • Iroquois chased most of them out

  • 1661

    King Charles II of England granted the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers (Northern Neck)
    George Washington surveyed a considerable part of this land between 1748 and 1751
  • Period: to

    European exploration and settlement

  • 1671

    General Abraham Wood sent a party from Fort Henry led by Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam to survey this territory
    First Europeans recorded to discover Kanawha Falls (allegedly)

  • 1716

    Governor Alexander Spotswood’s Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition made it to the Blue Ridge Mountains

  • 1725

    John Van Metre penetrated into the northern proportion
    German settlers from Pennsylvania founded New Mecklenburg (Present-day Shepherdstown)

  • 1774

    Shortly before the American Revolutionary War, the Crown Governor of Virginia led a force over the mountains .A body of militia dealt the Shawnee Natives a crushing blow at the junction between the Kanawha and Ohio riversNative American attacks on settlers continued until after the American Revolutionary War
  • Period: to

    American Revolutionary War

    During the American Revolutionary war, many settlers in western Virginia served in the Continental Army
    Small rebellion (Claypool’s Rebellion of 1780-81) in which a group of men refused to pay taxes.
  • Period: to

    Trans-Allegheny Virginia

    • Social conditions were completely different from eastern Virginia.
    • Many immigrants from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, or settlers from northern states.
    • There was a movement during the American Revolution
    • Petition for the establishment of “Westsylvania” was presented to Congress, due to the barrier to the east created by the mountains.
    • Slavery was unprofitable and there were many political, social, economic and cultural differences between Virginia’s two sections

  • Meeting in Richmond, Virginia

    • Meeting in Richmond to consider reforming Virginia’s outdated constitution
    • Philip Doddridge championed the cause of western Virginians who wanted a more democratic frame of government, but it was rejected by leaders from east of the Alleghenies, because they wanted to keep slavery

  • Virginia Constitutional Convention

    Several issues were addressed:
    - Governors, the judiciary and sheriffs were to be elected by public vote
    - Representation in the House of Delegates was appointed based on the census of 1850
    - Slaves below the age of 12 were not taxed and older slaves were only taxed at $300
    - Small farmers had all their assets, animals and land taxed at full value
    - Different opinions over slavery and lack of funding in the west by the government caused western Virginia to separate from the eastern side
  • Period: to

    American Civil War

    • West Virginia faced minimal damage
    • General McClellan's forces took control in 1861, and Lee's defeat secured western Virginia.
    • General Imboden's Confederates overran parts of the state in 1863.
    • Low voter turnout for statehood was influenced by arrests, military presence, and secessionist sentiment.
    • Slavery was gradually abolished.
    • Partisan tensions were high after the war, leading to the confiscation of Confederate property and the disfranchisement of supporters.
    • New constitution

  • Virginia Secession Convention of 1861

    • Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 voted to secede (withdraw) from the Union
    • However, of the 49 delegates from the northwestern corner, only 17 voted in favor of secession, while 30 voted against and the remaining two were absent.

  • First Wheeling Convention

    • Each county in Virginia sent delegates to discuss whether a new state should be formed or not.
    • They decided that if the Virginians adopted the Secession of ordinance, they would meet again in June

  • Second Wheeling Convention

    The secession had been called without popular consent, son it’s effects would be null and void and all who had stuck to it had vacated their offices - An act for a reorganization of the government was passed
    - Delegates chose Francis H. Pierpoint as governor of Virginia and two US senators to replace secessionists
    - The federal government promptly recognized the new government, thus there were two governments in Virginia: one pledging allegiance to the United States and one to the Confederacy

  • Third Wheeling Convention

    Votes to form a new state
    - 18K vote for
    - 800 vote against
    - Cast mostly by Wheeling citizens, as pro-confederacy citizens felt they lived in another country
    - Mostly Wheeling citizens controlled West Virginia, but federal forces drove the Confederates out of the county

  • West Virginia secedes from Virginia