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.
Sept. 25, 1864: George Smith Patton was killed at the Third Battle of Winchester. Patton, a Charleston lawyer, had organized the Kanawha Riflemen, a Virginia militia company. He was the grandfather of Gen. George S. Patton of World War II.
Sept. 26, 1816: David Hunter Strother was born in Martinsburg. He was an artist and an author who used the pen name “Porte Crayon.”
Sept. 26, 1863: The Great Seal of West Virginia was adopted by the legislature. The seal, which has remained unchanged, was designed by Joseph H. Diss Debar.
Sept. 27, 1914: Author Catherine Marshall was born in Johnson City, Tennessee. Her family moved to West Virginia and lived in Keyser during the late 1920s and the 1930s.Her best-loved novel, Christy (1967), was based on her mother’s girlhood in the southern mountains.
Sept. 28, 1955: Labor activist Sarah “Mother” Blizzard died at age 90. Blizzard was deeply involved in the United Mine Workers of America, from the organization’s early beginnings in the late 19th century.
Sept. 29, 1861: The Kanawha Valley experienced severe flooding. The Kanawha River reached 46.87 feet in Charleston, more than 16 feet above flood stage.
Sept. 29, 1927: Artist June Kilgore was born in Huntington. She was an abstract expressionist painter who spent 30 years as an art professor at Marshall University.
Sept. 30, 1832: Social activist Anne Reeves Jarvis was born in Virginia. Years later, in Taylor County, she organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs to improve health conditions and to nurse Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. She was the inspiration for Mother’s Day, first celebrated in Grafton in 1908.
Sept. 30, 1872: Educator Fannie Cobb Carter was born in Charleston. She organized the teacher-training department at what is now West Virginia State University, led the State Industrial Home for Colored Girls in Huntington, and was director of adult education in Kanawha County.
Sept. 30, 2010: Facing an economic downturn and foreign competition, Wheeling-La Belle Nail Company closed.The company was founded in 1852 as LaBelle Ironworks.By 1875, Wheeling was known as the Nail City, and La Belle was the city’s leading nail producer.
Oct. 1, 1896: Rural Free Delivery began in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. Before this, there was no rural mail delivery, although more than half the country’s citizens lived in rural areas.
Oct. 1, 1950: West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman was born in Indiana, graduated from Bethany College, and later moved to Wheeling. He is a noted storyteller, children’s author, and poet who wrote and recited his poem “A Song for West Virginia” for our state’s sesquicentennial in 2013.
