Charleston WV – The following events happened on these dates in West Virginia history.
To read more, go to e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia at www.wvencyclopedia.org.
Feb. 29, 1888: Republican Stephen B. Elkins, who had grown up in Missouri, gave his
first political speech in West Virginia. He was soon appointed U.S. secretary of war and then
elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming a major Republican figure in the state and nation.
March 1, 1831: Jackson County was created from parts of Wood, Mason and Kanawha
counties and named in honor of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president.
March 1, 1870: The legislature passed an act to create a branch normal school at West
Liberty. For the next 61 years, the school was a teacher preparatory institution. It is now a
university.
March 1, 1898: Homer Adams Holt was born in Lewisburg. In 1937, he became West
Virginia’s 20th governor.
March 2, 1840: The Virginia General Assembly granted a charter for Bethany College.
From the beginning, it has been a four-year, baccalaureate-degree college, the oldest such
institution in West Virginia.
March 2, 1896: Clair Bee was born in Pennsboro. Bee was a successful, innovative
college basketball coach and widely published author of both technical basketball books and
young adult fiction centered on sports.
March 2, 1915: A blast swept through Layland No. 3 Mine in Fayette County, killing
114 men.
March 2, 1927: The West Virginia capitol building known as the “pasteboard capitol”
was destroyed by fire. This wood-frame building in downtown Charleston had been built in just
42 days after the previous Victorian-style capitol building burned in 1921.
March 2, 1961: Governor Wally Barron signed legislation that granted Marshall College
university status.
March 3, 1843: Barbour County was created from parts of Lewis, Harrison and
Randolph counties and named for the distinguished Virginia jurist Philip Pendleton Barbour.
March 3, 1890: Teacher and civic activist Memphis Tennessee Garrison was born in
Virginia. She helped develop NAACP chapters in southern West Virginia and created the
Christmas Seal Project.
March 4, 1849: Earl Williams Oglebay was born in Bridgeport, Ohio. He became one of
Wheeling’s most successful industrialists and generous benefactors.
March 4, 1893: Governor William MacCorkle gave his inaugural address in which he
warned that West Virginia was “passing under the control of foreign and non-resident
landowners.”
March 4, 1924: Blues musician Nathaniel H. “Nat” Reese was born in Salem, Virginia.
Growing up in Princeton, Reese learned and played blues, jazz, country and dance music
throughout the southern coalfields. He is a member of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.
March 5, 1856: Calhoun County was created from neighboring Gilmer County and
named for John C. Calhoun, who served as vice president under John Quincy Adams and
Andrew Jackson.
March 5, 1963: Country musician Hawkshaw Hawkins was killed in a plane crash in
Tennessee, along with Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Randy Hughes. Hawkins was born in
Huntington.
March 6, 1820: Joseph H. Diss Debar was born in France. Diss Debar was the designer
of the Great Seal of West Virginia and the state’s first commissioner of immigration.
March 6, 1828: Johnson Camden was born in Lewis County. In 1861, he opened one of
the state’s first oil wells, in Wirt County, and a refinery in Parkersburg in 1869. He was elected
to the U.S. Senate in 1881.
March 6, 1900: A mine explosion at the Red Ash Mine in Fayette County killed 46 men.
It was the state’s first major mine disaster of the 20th century. Five years later, another 24 men
were killed at the same mine.