Calhoun County History

Calhoun County was created by an act of the Virginia General Assembly on March 5, 1856 from Gilmer County. At that time, the county had less than 2,500 residents.

Calhoun County was named in honor of John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), a famous South Carolina statesman who championed state's rights. He was born in Abbeville district, South Carolina on March 18, 1782. His father was a farmer in the state's Piedmont area (high lands) and a slave owner. John Calhoun was self-educated as a youngster and entered Yale in 1801. He graduated from Yale with honors in 1804, attended law school in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807. He was elected to the South Carolina state legislature in 1808, serving from 1809 to 1811. In 1811, he married a wealthy cousin, Floride Bonneau Calhoun. Also, that year, he was elected to represent South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives and served there until 1817 when he was named James Monroe's Secretary of War (1817-1825). During his congressional career, Calhoun championed what became known as the "American System" - a combination of protective tariffs to protect domestic industries from foreign competition, increased funding for internal transportation projects, and a national bank to regulate the value of money. In 1824, he was elected Vice-President of the United States and served in John Quincy Adams' administration. He was re-elected in 1828 and served in Andrew Jackson's administration. By that time, he had revised his position on the tariff and formulated his famous doctrine of nullification, arguing that states could use their sovereign rights to nullify acts of congress. In November 1832, a special convention in South Carolina declared the tariff null and void within the state. Jackson supported the tariff, placing Calhoun in an awkward situation. Calhoun resigned as Vice-President and entered the U.S. Senate to defend South Carolina's rights. He served in the Senate from 1832 to 1843. In 1844, he joined John Tyler's administration as Secretary of State (1844-1845) and led the effort to annex Texas into the Union. In 1845, he returned to the Senate and served there until his death on March 31, 1850.

The First Settlers

The first native settlers in central West Virginia (Braxton, Calhoun, Clay, Gilmer, Lewis, Nicholas, Roane, Upshur, and Webster counties) were the Mound Builders, also known as the Adena people. Remnants of their civilization have been found throughout northern West Virginia, with many artifacts found in the Northern Panhandle, especially in Marshall County.

A more thorough presentation of the first native settlers in West Virginia can be read on-line here. The following is a brief overview of that history:

• Several thousand Hurons occupied present-day West Virginia during the late 1500s and early 1600s.

• During the 1600s, the Iroquois Confederacy (then consisting of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca tribes) drove the Hurons from the state and used it primarily as a hunting ground.

• During the early 1700s, the Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, and other Indian tribes also used present-day West Virginia as a hunting ground. West Virginia's Potomac Highlands was inhabited by the Tuscarora. They eventually migrated northward to New York and, in 1712, became the sixth nation to formally be admitted to the Iroquois Confederacy. The Cherokee Nation claimed southern West Virginia.

• In 1744, Virginia officials purchased the Iroquois title of ownership to West Virginia in the Treaty of Lancaster.

• The Delaware, Mingo, and Shawnee sided with the French during the French and Indian War (1755-1763). The Iroquois Confederacy officially remained neutral, but many in the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the French.

• When the French and Indian War was over, England's King George III feared that more tension between Native Americans and settlers was inevitable. In an attempt to avert further bloodshed, he issued the Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Proclamation was, for the most part, ignored.

• During the summer of 1763, Ottawa Chief Pontiac led raids on key British forts in the Great Lakes region. Shawnee Chief Keigh-tugh-qua, also known as Cornstalk, led similar raids on western Virginia settlements. The uprisings ended on August 6, 1763 when British forces, under the command of Colonel Henry Bouquet, defeated Delaware and Shawnee forces at Bushy Run in western Pennsylvania.

• In 1768, the Iroquois Confederacy (often called the Six Nations) and the Cherokee signed the Treaty of Hard Labour and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, relinquishing their claims on the territory between the Ohio River and the Alleghenies to the British.

• In April 1774, the Yellow Creek Massacre took place near Wheeling. Among the dead were Mingo Chief Logan's brother and pregnant sister. Violence then escalated intoLord Dunmore's War.

• On October 10, 1774, Colonel Andrew Lewis and approximately 800 men defeated 1,200 Indian warriors led by Shawnee Chief Cornstalk at the Battle of Point Pleasant, ending Lord Dunmore's War.

• The Mingo and Shawnee allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War (1776-1783). One of the more notable battles occurred in 1777 when a war party of 350 Wyandot, Shawnee, and Mingo warriors, armed by the British, attacked Fort Henry, near present-day Wheeling. Nearly half of the Americans manning the fort were killed in the three-day assault. Following the war, the Mingo and Shawnee, once again allied with the losing side, returned to their homes in Ohio. As the number of settlers in the region grew, both the Mingo and the Shawnee move further inland, leaving western Virginia to the white settlers.

Calhoun County's European Pioneers and Settlers

In 1770, George Washington was surveying in the vicinity of Calhoun County. He reported in his journal a chance meeting with a Mr. Ennis. Most historians credit Ennis as Calhoun County's first English settler. Washington also noted meeting several ginseng traders that visited the area regularly. Later that year, six men, including William White, Thomas Drennen, Paul Shaver, and John Cutright, passed through the county as they scouted for Indians along the Ohio, Kanawha, and Little Kanawha Rivers. In 1772, William Lowther, Jesse Hughes, and Elias Hughes journeyed from the West Fork Valley into the Little Kanawha Valley, generally following the Hughes River, named for the two brothers. George Washington also received reports during the 1780s from Captain Thomas Swearengen, Captain John Hardin, and Zackquill Morgan of their explorations of present-day Calhoun County.

Abraham Thomas was probably the first, permanent, settler in present-day Calhoun County. In 1774, he was granted four hundred acres in the county and built a cabin on his land along the banks of the Little Kanawha River. Other early settlers included Michael Stump (1804), Phillip Starcher, Sr. (1810), and James Mayse (1814).

Important Events in Calhoun County during the 1800s

Robert Clifford is the first recorded teacher in Calhoun County. In 1818, he taught twelve students in a cave near Annamoriah.

During the Civil War, most of the county's residents sided with the Confederacy. When Union forces entered the county in 1861, many of the local residents joined the Mocassin Rangers, a para-military organization led by George Downs, Daniel Dusky, Peter Saurburn, Perry Conley, and his friend, Nancy Hart, know locally as the "Lady Guerilla." The Rangers engaged in a number of skirmishes with the Union forces, including battles in November 1861 in and around Grantsville and in May 6, 1862 at Arnoldsburg.

The Calhoun County Seat

The first meeting of the Calhoun County court was held on April 14, 1856 at the home of Joseph W. Burson (later killed at the Battle of Arnoldsburg). His home was located at the mouth of Pine Creek, on the Little Kanawha River. The first members of the court were: Harrison R. Ferrel, Joshua S. Knight, Miram Ferrel, Daniel Duskey, George Lynch, Jr., and William A. Brennon.

In September 1856, the justices of the county court met at a house near the residence of Peregrine Hays in Arnoldsburg. In the meantime, the act creating the county specified that the county's residents were to determine if the permanent county seat was to be located at Pine Bottom, the mouth of Yellow Creek, or at the "neck of the Big Bend." In November 1856, the county's voters choose the site at the mouth of Yellow Creek. However, the county justices did not get along, and two county courts emerged, one consisting of the leading citizens from Arnoldsburg, and the other from Pine Bottom. A unified county court was established at Yellow Creek, the current site of Brooksville, on September 15, 1857. The following year, the county seat moved back to Arnoldsburg and the county court acquired land from Peregrine Hays to build a county courthouse.

In 1862, Union forces under the command of Thomas M. Harris captured Arnoldsburg and placed Peregrine Hays under arrest as a political prisoner. The state legislature then moved the county seat to Grantsville. It was originally settled by Eli Riddle during the 1820s, but the land was owned by Simon and Ruth Stump when it was platted in 1866. They named the town in honor of General Ulysses Simpson Grant, General of the Union Army during the Civil War and later the 18th President of the United States (1869-1877). The town was incorporated in 1896.

Once the Civil War concluded, the citizens of Arnoldsburg demanded that the county seat be returned to them. In 1869, a fire of mysterious origin destroyed the courthouse under construction in Grantsville before it was occupied. Soon after, the state legislature ordered the county to move the county seat back to Arnoldsburg. The county court met in Arnoldsburg on August 26, 1869, but then met at Grantsville in September, and then back in Arnoldsburg in November. An election was held in October 1869 to settle the issue. The voters selected Grantsville as the county seat. The leading citizens of Arnoldsburg then contested the election. Their appeal failed. In 1898, the leading citizens of Arnoldsburg claimed that the courthouse at Grantsville was unsafe and attempted to get the county seat changed once again. Another election was held, and the county's voters, 935-925, decided to keep the county seat in Grantsville.

References

Calhoun County Centennial, 1856-1956. 1956. Grantsville, WV: Calhoun County Centennial Corporation.

Calhoun County Historical and Genealogical Society. 1989. History of Calhoun County, West Virginia. Waynesville, NC: Walsworth Publishing Company.

Calhoun County Historical and Genealogical Society. 1982. Calhoun County in the Civil War. Grantsville, WV: Calhoun County Historical and Genealogical Society.

Author

Dr. Robert Jay Dilger, Director, Institute for Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science, West Virginia University.

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