Andrew's world West Virginia history

     August 20th, 2022 was the date of the first post I made on this blog. That post was about a story that took place at a local cemetery that I had heard about. I had actually read about that story on another blog about ten years before that http://theresashauntedhistoryofthetri-state.blogspot.com Now, at the time, that was just a random blog I happened to run across, but I ended up meeting Theresa. Life is funny. I was  really excited about that story and with Theresa's permission, I put my own spin on it.      Since then, I've wrote a lot more posts about the history and goings on of West Virginia. Maybe I'm tooting my own horn here, but I think historians like myself are important. Without people researching and writing about our history, people in one hundred years might say "wait, why isnt West Virginia just a part of virginia?". But I'll leave that for you to decide.            

    This is a continuation of the post I made on July 4th, 2023 about the declaration of independence. In this post, I'll discuss the Boston Tea Party. "But Andrew, that has nothing to do with West Virginia" Without this there never would've never even been an America, shut up.       If you ask most people about the Boston tea party, they'll tell you it was the result of Britain raising the tax on tea. Quite the contrary, if anything, Britain was making tea cheaper for the colonists.      See, at the time, tea was a huge deal, it was new, exciting and exotic, and everybody everywhere was drinking it. Most of the tea in the colonies was smuggled in. This really hurt the East India Trading company, which was a big player in Britain's economy. The East India Trading company had a huge surplus of tea rotting in warehouses in London. So, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the tea act of 1773 in May, which gave the East India Trading Company a monopoly on sellin

     The 'ber months are among us now, so I thought I would write a little about one of WV's most popular fall attractions, The Pumpkin House in Kenova, WV. The house. The house itself is the homestead of Joseph Miller, built in 1891. Joseph S. Miller (1848-1921) was a prominent citizen of WV. He was an attorney and  served many years of his life in local government, served as WV auditor, was appointed as commissioner of the IRS and ran for Governor of WV in 1884  (he dropped out of the race). Joseph became good friends with president Grover Cleveland and Cleveland actually spent the night at the house once. The fact about Joseph Miller that I love is his daughter's name was Lavalette and that's where the town of Lavalette, WV got it's name... But that's the topic for another day Since Joseph Miller, other prominent members of the town have resided in the house, including current owner Ric Griffith who served two terms as Mayor of Kenova and is currently a state

Here is our beautiful capitol building, which is the second one in Charleston. Construction on this building was started in 1924 and was completed in 1932, by famous architect Cass Gilbert. The building houses the state legislature as well as the Governor's office and the offices of several other government officials. The picture looks to be taken from the UC side of the river. Edit- its actually the fourth Capitol building in Charleston and sixth one overall in WV

      Everybody knows (or should know) about the namesake of the village of Sod by now, Samuel O'Dell Dunlap. I think theres a very important settler that often gets over looked though.      I'm sure you've read the sign at the mouth of Cobbs creek that says it was named for Fleming Cobbs.       Fleming B. Cobbs, Sr. Was a famous scout, born December  23rd, 1767 in Albemarle county, Virginia and died January 10th, 1846 at the age of 78 in his cabin at the mouth of Davis creek in kanawha county, Virginia.        Fleming was an Indian scout for the US army and was stationed at fort Lee, which stood at the mouth of the Elk river in present day Charleston (I wrote about fort Lee in a previous post).       In his book, the first 200 years of Cobbs creek , Dave McCormick says "his job was to travel up and down the Kanawha and Ohio valleys checking for indian sign, from May until October"       He goes on to tell about how Fleming apparently had a lean to around where th

     I normally try to stay relevant with this blog, but today I'm gonna talk about some American history, rather than West Virginia history.      Yesterday was July 4th, the anniversary of when our founding fathers signed the declaration of independence... Or did they?      Well, yea, they did sign it but not on the day you might think. The second continental Congress did meet on July 4th, 1776 and the declaration was approved that day but most of the 56 delegates didn't actually sign until August 2nd, 1776. E. Harrison, July 4th, 2012, 9 things you may not know about the declaration of independence, history.com Signing of the declaration of independence, education.nationalgeographic.com