VA-Z209 West Virginia

Marker text: WEST VIRGINIA

Describing the contrast between both the placid and delightful Shenandoah and the wild and tremendous mountains in western Virginia, now West Virginia, Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia, This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. According to tradition, the first European pioneer to settle here was Morgan Morgan, a Welshman who immigrated to Mill Creek and acquired his land in Nov. 1730; German immigrants, however, were probably in the Shephardstown area in 1727. In 1861, many counties in western Virginia opposed secession. On 20 June 1863 Congress admitted fifty of them to the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

Department of Historic Resources, 1999