April 9, 1817: John Nuttall was born in England. He was one of the first operators to ship coal on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in the early 1870s and founded the town of Nuttallburg in the New River Gorge.
April 9, 1900: Physician Margaret Byrnside “Dr. Maggie” Ballard was born. She actively pursued her interest in genealogy and local history and was a founder of the Monroe County Historical Society.
April 10, 1848: John Kenna was born in Kanawha County. In 1883, the state legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, unseating the powerful Henry G. Davis. Kenna is one of two West Virginians memorialized by a statue in the U.S. Capitol.
April 10, 1932: Entertainer Blaze Starr was born as Fanny Belle Fleming in Wayne County. The owner of a burlesque club rechristened her “Blaze Starr.” Her story was the basis of the movie Blaze.
April 11, 1821: Congressman Jacob Beeson Blair was born in Parkersburg. Blair was the first West Virginian to be told by President Abraham Lincoln of Lincoln’s support for making West Virginia a state.
April 11, 1847: Diarist Sirene Bunten was born in French Creek, Upshur County. As a teenager, she kept a diary about her daily activities, including emotional accounts of life on the West Virginia home front during the Civil War.
April 11, 1909: Writer Hubert Skidmore was born at Laurel Mountain in Webster County. In his novels, Skidmore depicted stoic endurance by mountain people in the face of misfortune and economic exploitation by outside interests.
April 11, 1940: Award-winning artist Susan Poffenbarger was born in Charleston. Her work can be found in many galleries as well as in the IRS National Computing Center in Martinsburg and the Federal Courthouse Annex in Wheeling. She died in 2025.
April 11, 1964: Writer Pinckney Benedict was born in Lewisburg. His two collections of short stories, Town Smokes and The Wrecking Yard, as well as his novel Dogs of God were named Notable Books by the New York Times Book Review.
April 12, 1865: The 36th Virginia Infantry, known as the Logan Wildcats, disbanded. The Confederate company was created at Logan Courthouse on June 3, 1861, and consisted of about 85 men. The company saw its first action in the Battle of Scary Creek in Putnam County.
April 12, 1885: Photographer George James Kossuth was born. After opening his Wheeling studio in 1909, he achieved broad fame for his photos of the city and insightful portraits of world celebrities, including Richard Strauss, Jascha Heifetz, Leopold Stokowski, Clarence Darrow and Richard Nixon.
April 13, 1873: Lawyer, diplomat and 1924 Democratic candidate for president John William Davis was born in Clarksburg. Davis argued 141 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. His last case was one of the most controversial, when he argued in 1952 to continue racial segregation in South Carolina.
April 13, 1951: Sculptor Bill Hopen was born. The Sutton artist’s works appear in government buildings, museums, churches, and hospitals around West Virginia, across the nation, and abroad.
April 14, 1774: Surveyors met at the mouth of the Kanawha River to establish military bounty claims in Kentucky. They became involved in several skirmishes with Indians in the region. This was the start of Dunmore’s War, the name given to the conflict in the Ohio Valley in the spring of 1774.
April 14, 1945: Twenty people were killed when a commercial airplane on its way to Morgantown flew off course and crashed into the side of Cheat Mountain.
April 15, 1872: Peter Godwin Van Winkle died in Parkersburg. Van Winkle was a member of the Governor’s Council of the Reorganized Government of Virginia, 1861-63, under Gov. Francis Pierpont. On August 4, 1863, Van Winkle was elected as one of West Virginia’s first two U.S. senators.
