Andrew's world West Virginia history

  Photo sourced from Pintrest.com          Britannica.com defines “paranormal” as very strange . Not able to be explained by what scientists know about nature and the world..     We have had several things in the mountain state that would fall under that category. Usually, when people hear “paranormal ”, they think of ghosts, but you can’t forget the cryptids. “ Cryptid” is usually defined as an animal that is said to exist but isn’t proven to.     We have had at least a couple of those over the years, but one is unique to West Virginia. I’m of course talking about the Flatwoods monster AKA the Braxton County monster AKA Braxxie .   Back in 1952, in the small West Virginia Village of Flatwoods, something terrified six kids, a mother and a dog. The story goes two young brothers had been playing in their school yard on September 12 th, 1952, the boys were 12 and 13 years old. They were playing there with their friend, who was ten years old. The three boys saw a red light

     A few months ago, I visited the town of Thurmond, West Virginia. This was after watching a documentary about it, everybody knows me and my dad will nerd out about a documentary.      Thurmond is an old railroad town that sits on the bank of the new river. It's said to be the "heart of the gorge".As of 2020, the population was 5. This wasn't always the case, back in the 1920's, Thurmond was a Thriving town. At its peak, it had a population of 500! Nowadays, the park service owns about 80% of the town.      The town was originally founded in the 1880's  and was incorporated in 1903, by  Captain William D. Thurmond on land he received as payment for surveying the North side of the New River. William served as a captain during the civil war. Captain Thurmond died in 1910 and sadly didn't get to see the height of the town.Until 1921, the town was only accessible by train. Alcohol was banned by Captain Thurmond, but just outside the incorporated part of tow

Photo sourced from nationalww2museum.org      Everybody knows about the attack on pearl harbor on December 7th, 1941. If you don't, you need to read up on that. Did you know one of the ships on "battleship row" was named for West Virginia? She was actually the second battleship to be named for the state.      Built in Newport News, Virginia, the West Virginia was commissioned in December 1923. She spent much of her life in the pacific.       West Virginia's base was moved to pearl harbor, Hawaii in 1940. She was still there in 1941 when the Japanese attacked. The West Virginia was hit by at least seven torpedoes, maybe nine, which blew huge holes in one side and she quickly sank. Over one hundred of the West Virginia's crew were lost.      Things were looking up for the USS West Virginia when she was raised from the shallow harbor and was repaired temporarily at the Pearl Harbor Navy yard. In 1943, she went to the Puget Navy yard for final repairs and

     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