The History Project WVgov

After his great success recruiting from the Shenandoah Valley, George Washington reached further into Western Virginia to draw its riflemen to serve in the American Revolution, whom he turned into a vast arm of the Continental Army. The 8th Virginia Regiment for alongside Washington in battle and suffered the winter with him in Valley Forge. 

Considered the “Father of West Virginia,” Francis H. Pierpont was the man needed for the difficult task of gaining the state’s independence from Virginia and entrusted by Lincoln to restore that state to order after the Civil War; the West Virginian who would be Governor of Virginia.

With its steep topography, residents in West Virginia are typically more concerned with floods than tornadoes, but in 1944, the Appalachian tornado outbreak unleashed fury upon the mountains. A category F-4 storm tested the resilience of Shinnston and surrounding area.

In 1974, the Kanawha County Board of Education introduced a new set of language arts textbooks, following state and federal guidelines to provide a more multicultural education. A newly elected board member, who ran against sex education, denounced the books and set in motion a culture war that resounded around the nation. 

The Mason-Dixon Line was created to officially decide the boundary between states, but as enslavement became entrenched in the South, it became the dividing line between slave states an free states, making Western Virginia’s proximity to Pennsylvania a locus of the Underground Railroad. 

With the Ohio River as its northwestern boundary, the Underground Railroad ran through Western Virginia before the Civil War, giving the body of water the nickname, “The River Jordan,” as it led to the “promised land” of freedom.  Abolitionists, the enslaved, and free Blacks conspired together to get escaped slaves across the river and to new lives.