May 16, 1778: About 300 Wyandot and Mingo Indians attacked Fort Randolph at Point
Pleasant. Unable to take the fort, they proceeded up the Kanawha River toward other settlements.
May 16, 1815: Politician Alexander Boteler was born in Shepherdstown. He served in
both the U.S. and Confederate congresses, was a key adviser to “Stonewall” Jackson, and co-
founded what is now Shepherd University.
May 16, 1928: Minister Robert Graetz Jr. was born in Clarksburg. He helped organize
the Montgomery bus boycott and was the only White minister in the highly segregated Alabama
city to support the boycott publicly.
May 17, 1854: A violent windstorm swept up the Ohio River and severely damaged the
Wheeling Suspension Bridge.
May 17, 1862: The Battle of Pigeon Roost took place in Princeton during the Civil War.
Union soldiers were noisily approaching Princeton from the southeast, unaware that the
Confederates were lying in ambush. The attack left an estimated 18 federal troops killed and 38
wounded.
May 18, 1955: While pitching for the Chicago Cubs, Monongah native Sam Jones
became the first Black pitcher in Major League Baseball history to toss a no-hitter.
May 18, 2012: Ice Mountain in Hampshire County was named a National Natural
Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior at a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of
the program.
May 19, 1920: Ten people were killed in a shootout sometimes referred to as the
Matewan Massacre. Baldwin-Felts detectives came to Matewan to evict striking miners and their
families, but Police Chief Sid Hatfield tried to stop the evictions as being unauthorized by law.
May 20, 1949: Nick Joe Rahall II was born in Beckley. When Rahall first entered
Congress in 1977, he was its youngest member.
May 21, 1853: William M. O. Dawson was born in Bloomington, Maryland, just across
the Potomac River from what is now the Eastern Panhandle. In 1905, he became West Virginia’s 12th governor.
May 22, 1947: Supreme Court Justice Margaret “Peggy” Workman was born in
Charleston. In November 1988, she became the first woman elected to the West Virginia
Supreme Court of Appeals and to statewide office in West Virginia.