West Virginia History

This paper is part of a larger research project to explore the life of Anne Spencer, poet and activist.  This paper will discuss the roles of the two Virginias, West Virginia and Virginia, in her life and development, as recollected by Anne Spencer.  Spencer was recognized as a poet of the Harlem Renaissance as her work reached maturity during this time period.  Throughout her life, Anne Spencer slipped between the borders of Virginia and West Virginia, one Virginia nurturing her in youth, giving her the time to dream dreams; the place where poems and a love of nature began.  The other Virginia was to become her platform, the place where her poems flourished, where she followed a personal call to activism, and where she nurtured her garden as a refuge from the outer world.  The unusual circumstances of her life in Bramwell, West Virginia were to become the foundation of her extraordinary life in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance poet, civil rights activist, teacher, librarian, and noted gardener, lived a life of dualities.  Born into the old state of Virginia she saw her formative years in the new state of West Virginia.  She experienced her life as a young adult during the great industrialization of a boom town and her married life in a city with a traditional economy.  While she sought solitude and respite from the world around her, she was also a proponent for civil rights activism.  This paper discusses her experiences and the recollections of her life during an important period of change in African American history

This paper is part of a larger research project to explore the life of Anne Spencer, poet and activist.  This paper will discuss the roles of the two Virginias, West Virginia and Virginia, in her life and development, as recollected by Anne Spencer.  Spencer was recognized as a poet of the Harlem Renaissance as her work reached maturity during this time period.  Throughout her life, Anne Spencer slipped between the borders of Virginia and West Virginia, one Virginia nurturing her in youth, giving her the time to dream dreams; the place where poems and a love of nature began.  The other Virginia was to become her platform, the place where her poems flourished, where she followed a personal call to activism, and where she nurtured her garden as a refuge from the outer world.  The unusual circumstances of her life in Bramwell, West Virginia were to become the foundation of her extraordinary life in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance poet, civil rights activist, teacher, librarian, and noted gardener, lived a life of dualities.  Born into the old state of Virginia she saw her formative years in the new state of West Virginia.  She experienced her life as a young adult during the great industrialization of a boom town and her married life in a city with a traditional economy.  While she sought solitude and respite from the world around her, she was also a proponent for civil rights activism.  This paper discusses her experiences and the recollections of her life during an important period of change in African American history.

Periods and typologies are artificial boxes that archaeologists use to classify cultures and the artifacts that they used. Consequently, there is a need to re-evaluate old paradigms as new data become available, particularly when these paradigms are internally inconsistent. This thesis focuses on the Transitional period in western Pennsylvania and analyzes both the semantic division of cultural periods between 2900-900 BC and the types of projectile points used to define this period. Current descriptions of the Transitional period adequately describe eastern Pennsylvania but fail to adequately describe the material culture and point typologies of western Pennsylvania. Data from existing excavations and site reports are synthesized to compile a database of radiocarbon dates associated with diagnostic projectile points in order to establish an accurate seriation of point types. These data are visually represented as series of maps to show spatial, typological, and chronological variation. The thesis’ ultimate purpose is to create a consistent projectile point chronology that can be used as a framework to accurately date sites within this region on the basis of typology.

An overview of the bibliography of the Clarksburg, West Virginia-based UFO book publisher Saucerian Publications and the biography of its proprietor, Gray Barker. Paper presented at the conference "Sacred Literature, Secular Religion," hosted by the LeMoyne College Religion and Literature Forum, Oct. 1-3, 2015.

Grave Creek stone was written by a Libyan sailor and warrior in 400 BC in Finnish in Old European script. His ship was part of a fleet transporting  refugees from the Po Valley of Italy to Ohio on Carthaginian Ships. His ship stayed over in Mexico for repairs, and by the time they arrived at the mouth of the Ohio, the fleet had already left for Carthage. Then a storm destroyed their ship, leaving them alone in a wilderness. He thinks of his wife far away, of nights in a cabin. Another terrible storm comes and his mates begin to fight. 
The stone was found in the upper burial chamber of the largest mound of the Adena culture in Moundsville, West Virginia. He not only survived, but became a famous chief, standing 7 ft 4 inches tall. He signed his name with a sword rebus that said, "I made many great champions."

The acclaimed history of Akro Agate and M.F. Christensen revised. This documentation is acknowledged by Michael Cohill (M.F Christensen), Roger Hardy (Akro Agate), & Michael Johnson (Co-Author of American Machine-Made Marbles), to be the correct historical documentation of these companies and of the glass marble industry, respectively.

This blog post explores the history of Storer College, from its humble beginnings as a primary school founded in 1865 by the Reverend Nathan Cook Brackett to educate the children of former slaves, to its development as a fully fledged college granting degrees to African American men and women, Storer College became the first institution of higher learning for African-Americans in the State.  Located in Harper’s Ferry near the site of John Brown’s 1859 attack on the Federal Armory, Storer College represented the freedom Civil War African-Americans hoped to achieve.

This paper is part of a larger research project to explore the life of Anne Spencer, poet and activist.  This paper will discuss the roles of the two Virginias, West Virginia and Virginia, in her life and development, as recollected by Anne Spencer.  Spencer was recognized as a poet of the Harlem Renaissance as her work reached maturity during this time period.  Throughout her life, Anne Spencer slipped between the borders of Virginia and West Virginia, one Virginia nurturing her in youth, giving her the time to dream dreams; the place where poems and a love of nature began.  The other Virginia was to become her platform, the place where her poems flourished, where she followed a personal call to activism, and where she nurtured her garden as a refuge from the outer world.  The unusual circumstances of her life in Bramwell, West Virginia were to become the foundation of her extraordinary life in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance poet, civil rights activist, teacher, librarian, and noted gardener, lived a life of dualities.  Born into the old state of Virginia she saw her formative years in the new state of West Virginia.  She experienced her life as a young adult during the great industrialization of a boom town and her married life in a city with a traditional economy.  While she sought solitude and respite from the world around her, she was also a proponent for civil rights activism.  This paper discusses her experiences and the recollections of her life during an important period of change in African American history.

Military Camp newspapers from this period are few and far between, reflecting the movement of troops, the availability of soldiers skilled as newspapermen, and the proximity of a usable press. These papers document the continuing flux of the military during the war, the development of western Virginia as it strives for independence from Virginia and the need to support and bolster the morale of their troops. Few copies survive and those that do are extremely valuable for their reports of daily life, the publication of popular songs and humorous sketches, and reports on battles, politics and troop movements.

The Monongalia Academy:  Chartered in 1814, the Academy’s administration was guided by a group of Morgantown men who served as its trustees.  Three attorneys among this group who served as trustees were instrumental to the life of the Academy, and credited with the civic and business development of Morgantown.  Although many others served as trustees for the Monongalia Academy over time, this look back over the succeeding two hundred years since the Academy’s charter examines the lives of some of the Academy’s leading principles.

Emergy provides a general accounting mechanism that allows us to view the economy and the environment on the same income statement and balance sheet. This allows an auditor to verify the economic picture by checking it against a more complete representation of the flows and storages of real wealth as measured by emergy. In this study, we constructed emergy accounts for the state of West Virginia in 1997. The income statement showed annual production, consumption, and flows of emergy and dollars into and out of the state. The balance sheet evaluated the storage of emergy in some of the state's assets. Emergy indices were used to answer questions posed by managers and gain insight into the state's economic and environmental strengths and weaknesses. West Virginia has great wealth in nonrenewable resources (9E14 sej m−2 or 17 times the U.S. average). The investment ratio of emergy purchased outside to indigenous renewable and nonrenewable emergy was 2.2:1, which indicates a high potential for future development. However, the environmental loading ratio (14:1) was already 1.5 times higher than that found at an average location in the U.S. Twice as much emergy was exported as received and standard of living indicators showed that people have largely failed to benefit from their state's wealth. We propose that, just as in business, where decisions made using financial accounts ensure solvency; decisions governing the environment should be made based on an emergy accounting of activities, assets, and liabilities for the combined system of humanity and nature.

In February 2018, teachers and other school personnel in West Virginia went on strike over persistently low salaries and a series of other defunding and deprofessionalizing legislative proposals. Over nine days, teachers created signs that argued their cause and showcased their messages on roadsides, in their own communities, en masse at the state capital, and in media outlets across the globe. In this article, we describe five themes that emerged from a discourse analysis of 50 protest signs. In response to circulating dismissive and demeaning discourses, teachers positioned themselves as professionals, content specialists, moral authority figures, valuable resources, and inheritors of cultural legacies.

Autobiographical account of the intimate connections and disconnections among Italy, West Virginia, coal, and Italianness.
http://bloggers.iitaly.org/bloggers/41598/what-does-feeling-italian-have-do-monongah-mine-disaster
Publication date: 2016
Publication name: I-Italy bloggers. Free online

What we know today as the West Virginia Code is a series of laws organized into 64 chapters, grouped together by topic, in such a way that it can be searched, analyzed, and utilized. The West Virginia Code is the statutory law of the State. It contains rules that address nearly every aspect of the State’s functionality, from how one must pay taxes to the mechanisms involved in acquiring and disposing of property, to the identification of criminal acts and their punishment, and to a plethora of others in between. However, this body of law did not simply come into existence in its present form. Reaching its current construction took decades. Early revisers and publishers labored over the Code for many years. These revisers transformed the Code from a mere borrowing of Virginia law, to a confusing compilation of statutes, to the Code that practitioners can now readily locate and decipher. This article examines and analyzes the history of the West Virginia Code. It explores the development of the Code and studies how each early edition aided in forming the foundation of the Code. This article also studies how acts passed by the West Virginia Legislature altered the Code structure and impacted how practitioners use the West Virginia Code of Laws.

W est Virginia's historians have tended to minimize the importance of slavery in the state's formation. With fewer than fifteen thousand slaves in the forty-eight counties that formed the state in 1863, the scarcity of the institution appeared to have had little hold over the region. Charles Ambler and George E. Moore contrasted the slave-based plantation economy of eastern Virginia with that of the free labor-based small farms and factories in the west to explain the state's formation. Richard Orr Curry's revisionist work shared this view. The slavery issue, he argued, arose only during debates on emancipation at the statehood conventions, not before. Since then, scholars have placed individual counties under the microscope to examine sectional loyalties at the local level. First, James H. Cook's study of Harrison County argued that Unionists consisting of former Whigs and some Democrats tried to thwart secessionist forces led by local elites. They succeeded by only ten votes. Second, John W. Shaffer's study of remote Barbour County argued that personal issues like marriage and kinship mattered more than wealth or community in choosing sides. 1 Third, Ken Fones-Wolf revealed how the threat of free-labor ideology added to the strong kinship and community ties among the small number of Wheeling secessionists. These studies have identified many new issues that divided western Virginians on the issue of secession except one: slavery.

This blog post explores the history of Storer College, from its humble beginnings as a primary school founded in 1865 by the Reverend Nathan Cook Brackett to educate the children of former slaves, to its development as a fully fledged college granting degrees to African American men and women, Storer College became the first institution of higher learning for African-Americans in the State.  Located in Harper’s Ferry near the site of John Brown’s 1859 attack on the Federal Armory, Storer College represented the freedom Civil War African-Americans hoped to achieve.

This conference presentation explores the double life of lepidopterist and coal baron William Henry Edwards’ (1822 – 1909).  Although born in New York, Edwards spent most of his adult life in Coalburg, a small town outside Charleston, West Virginia.  As a co-founder of the Kanawha and Ohio Coal Company, Edwards moved to Coalburg in order to be closer to his mining operations.  However, the real love of his life was butterflies and despite managing the day to day operations of his coal mining operations, Edwards spent thirty years of his life capturing, descripting and producing the greatest nineteenth century masterwork on Lepidoptera.

“The first thing that came in my way of book learning was the number 18,” wrote Booker t. Washington in his memoir Up From Slavery.  He then goes on to explain that in the darkness of the salt furnaces where he and his stepfather worked, the boss would go around and mark each barrel with an identifying number. Washington’s stepfather was always “18,” and Washington recalls that “after a while I got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters” (18).  While Washington spends much time extolling his own hard work in mastering book learning in his later years, the ambiguity of his initial phrasing is telling –that something “came in my way.”  The phrasing opens up the interpretative possibilities that this essay seeks to explore –by the way of what things did he encounter book leaning ?  And, equally, how were those same things obstacles?  A complex exchange of signification and power underlying the ambiguity of this phrase can be seen in Washington’s memoir, especially in the scenes that illustrate the mastery of literacy.  These scenes use troubled terms quite unlike the traditional equation of literacy and freedom common to antebellum slave narratives.  Indeed, Washington’s sense of “play” with the codes and sign systems used by white society seems barely congruent with the portrait of the literal-minded and doggedly pragmatic leader he came to be known as in his adulthood.

In the fall and winter of 1862-63, President Abraham Lincoln transformed the Civil War into a revolution by issuing the preliminary and final versions of his Emancipation Proclamation explains professor Michael Woods of Marshall University. Woods discusses the origins, development, and effects of the two-part proclamation, paying special attention to the place of West Virginia – then in the process of statehood – in the broader story. Shrouded in myths and half-truths, the Emancipation Proclamation’s true significance and limitations become clearer by considering the relationship of the Mountain State to the politics of slavery and war.

In the new and internally divided state of West Virginia, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April of 1865 immediately challenged the process of reconciliation needed to rebuild communities that had been disrupted by the political and military conflict of the Civil War. More than most other Americans, West Virginians had to confront former foes on a daily basis. Coming at the very start of the period of Reconstruction, the Lincoln assassination made this challenge even greater. Marshall University history professor Michael Woods looks at the impact of the assassination and little-known roles played by West Virginians in the event.

This talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATY4N0nqsI) explores the intersection of needlework, personal narrative, gender and artistic creativity in one woman’s extraordinary life in two out of the way places (Calabria and Appalachia) over the course of nearly a century. A lively close reading of one Italian woman artist’s lived experience and self-representation through her artistic repertoire provides the perfect context to discuss change over time in the social and economic lives of Italian women and the communities in which they lived on both sides of the Atlantic. The talk raises larger concerns surrounding issues of women’s role in the (re)production of culture, expands recent research on Italian and Italian immigrant women, and touches on the role of dialogue and reflexivity in the ethnographic process. Saverino is developing her work into a book-length manuscript to be published by the University of Mississippi Press..