&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Before West Virginia was formed out of Virginia, the Underground Railroad ran through what is now Parsons, West Virginia. Runaway slaves would make their way north via some of the most rugged mountains in the state. One of those hills is called Darkish Knob, and it still looms large over the town of Parsons due to its rich history. &nbsp; &nbsp; During Civil War times, a small house was built into the base of Darkish Knob for runaway slaves to take refuge on their path to freedom. Legend has it, that one night a young girl was riding her horse along the rocky terrain trying to locate the house. She was being chased by slave owners and her horse, startled, lost its footing and flung her off its back and down the mountain to her death in&nbsp;the Cheat River below.&nbsp; <blockquote>Many residents in the years following the girl’s death, spoke of the Darkish Knob as a sinister and evil filled place. Several unafraid people who have explored the location have “sensed” a presence in the area of the steep overgrown pathway. The ghostly image of the unnamed young girl is said to return to the top of the hill every year on the eve of the date of her death. The ghostly moans and cries of the slave girl are audible for several minutes before a terrifying scream is heard as the moment of her death approaches.1</blockquote>&nbsp; &nbsp; To this day, Darkish Knob is rumored to be haunted by this girl who supposedly lets out loud moans and wails through the night, still trying to find that house. Darkish Knob is routinely listed as one of the most haunted locations in West Virginia, and ghost hunters come from across the country to try to catch a glimpse of the paranormal, much to the chagrin of the locals.&nbsp;

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Darkish Knob is an imposing hill in Parsons, WV that many locals believe to be haunted by a young slave girl who fell to her demise here. During Civil War times, many runaway slaves traveled through what is now West Virginia on their way to find freedom. The Underground Railroad ran through Parsons, and a small hidden refuge was placed at the base of Darkish Knob. Supposedly, a young girl lost her way trying to find the hidden shelter and fell to her death on the rocks below. The Cheat River at the base of Darkish Knob washed her away, but locals still claim to hear her cries on the anniversary of her death. 

Darkish Knob

Institution

This is a quick walking tour that includes landmarks and historical events that have occurred in the small community of Parsons, West Virginia. This tour covers everything from landmark buildings, railroad depots, civil rights cases, and the Civil War.

Following the Civil War and the creation of West Virginia as a state, dramatic social, cultural, economic and political changes swept the
state as industrialization emerged by way of natural resource extractions in
the Mountain State. As new towns formed that resulted from railroads traversing
the mountainous state, these new communities often
vied for the distinction of being the county seat, which significantly
increased the chances of economic prosperity. After Reconstruction ended, and
industrialization grew in West Virginia, the political culture of the state
reformed to some degree that reflected
national trends of a new industrial society. For West Virginia, the changing
industrial atmosphere blurred the traditional political
and cultural lines that paralleled the vestiges
of Unionists and Confederate alignments.
Industrialization, that is, offered more prosperity than the traditional agrarian life that predominated West Virginia
(then Virginia) in its antebellum years. The political changes that took place
in West Virginia during the late
nineteenth century marked a turning point in the state’s young history, as new
towns competed with old towns for the distinction and benefits of having the county
seat and courthouse. One such example is the Tucker County Seat War between the
old town of St. George and the planned town of Parsons beginning in the early
1890s. 

In 1856, Virginia formed Tucker County and named the small town of St. George
as the county seat, and in the subsequent decades, the town witnessed minimal
growth. In 1888, St. George&nbsp;was devastated&nbsp;by fire, and much of the small town burned as a result. Furthermore, St. George
experienced more bad luck as Henry Gassaway Davis bypassed the county seat
while building his railroad, the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railroad and built to Parsons while heading for Elkins, West Virginia.
Meanwhile, as St. George’s population declined, the new town of Parsons
population began to increase. Ward Parsons, the booster and namesake for
Parsons, West Virginia began petitioning
the state for the county seat despite having only a population of roughly 50
people in 1889 according to historian Ronald L. Lewis. Over the course on the
next couple of years, Ward Parsons petitioned to the state, collected
signatures, but failed to get a majority vote for moving the county seat to the
town of Parsons on two different occasions. In a special election held in 1893,
Parsons finally gained the votes and was granted the county seat, but residents
of St. George did not stand for the vote and proceeded
with legal action. Adam C. Minear, the former sheriff of St. George, “filed a bill of exceptions with the
county court protesting election irregularities” and when that motion failed,
Minear and William M. Clayton, the county clerk filed an injunction with the state supreme court. 

When Ward Parsons heard the news of the injunction filed with the state supreme court,
he became worried about the amount of time that the injunction could delay
Parsons gaining the county seat position,
and decided to take action in another manner. As Ronald L. Lewis noted: “Ward
Parsons and his trusted partners formed an armed mob of about 200 men and
headed to St. George to remove court records, documents, and furniture from the
courthouse in St. George.” At the same time,
the Parsons mob headed to St. George, former Confederate, Robert Ward Eastham, and 70 men arrived on a train from Davis to help Parsons in liberating the court records. Residents of St. George caught wind of
the arriving mob and quickly armed themselves and prepared to defend their
town. As the Parsons mob entered St. George, they were met by a small group of
armed residents, and the sheriff ordered the mob to leave town. The St. George
mob, significantly outnumbered, dispersed and the Parsons mob broke into the
courthouse. Once inside the courthouse, the mob took court records, documents,
furniture, and the bell which hung in the tower. The mob proceeded to load the materials from the
courthouse in their wagons and headed back to Parsons. The next morning on August 2, 1893, Parsons was
officially the county seat of Tucker County, West Virginia. Throughout the next
few days, newspapers from West Virginia and across the country reported the
event as the Tucker County Seat War, declaring the incident, “a disgrace to
law, order, and decency,” the Wheeling
Intelligencer noted on August 4, 1893. 

Within a week, the Wheeling
Intelligencer ran an article describing the tense atmosphere in Parsons as
Ward Parsons, and his partners patrolled
the town anticipating retaliation from
St. George. While St. George did not physically retaliate against Parsons
physically, they did so in a legal manner
and took their case to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. In Hamilton et al. v. Tucker County et al.
the court of appeals ruled in favor of Parsons. “Justice Henry Brannon, writing
for the court, declared that no matter how the records were removed, the people of Tucker County had voted, and the county
court had declared Parsons the new county seat. These proceedings had been
lawful, and an earlier, forcible removal did not change the fact.” From this
point, Parsons became the undisputed county seat of Tucker County, West
Virginia. More importantly, the Tucker
County Seat War’s anticlimactic skirmish is not necessarily
the most significant aspect of the whole incident, rather the complexity of the
situation illustrates a much more multifaceted string of sociocultural and economic dynamics that set in motion the event. 

While traditional landed agrarian farmers held onto
their social and economical way of life,
industrialists in West Virginia also adapted to the changes sweeping the country and tried to steer West Virginia in the
same industrial direction. In West Virginia, during the late nineteenth
century, the state was politically divided and sectionalized by alignments
leftover from the Civil War. However, industrialization blurred those sociocultural alignments, due to the potential
economic prosperity that lied in West Virginia’s natural resources. Though traditionally a very difficult state to traverse, once railroads
penetrated the state’s interior and became more accessible, industrializing enhanced
a promising future. The composition of men involved with Ward Parsons and his
partners illustrates the changing sociocultural nature of West Virginia as industrialization
formed in the state. Ward Parsons and Robert Eastham were former Confederates
wealthy landowners, while the other partners
comprised of a doctor, lawyer, newspaperman, and farmers the consisted of an
eclectic mix of former Unionists and Confederates. Industrialization not only
changed the political dynamic of West Virginia as bother Republicans and
Democrats supported the economic change, but cultural associations also
shifted, mainly because industrialization offered economic prosperity for all
willing to invest. Old political alignments did not define the Tucker County
Seat War according to Ronald L. Lewis. Rather industrialization represented the
dramatic changes that shifted the political culture of the state. 

Economic opportunity superseded
political factionalism, that is to say, political factionalism did not cease in
West Virginia because of industrialization, but was certainly minimized as a
result of economic opportunity. The Tucker County Seat War is not solely unique
in West Virginia's history of industrialization and political atmosphere. Ronald
L. Lewis notes that “more than twenty West Virginia Counties experienced such
county seat warfare to some degree. Counties torn by divided loyalties during
the Civil War accounted for some of them, but economic development played a
dominant role in most of these battles during the late nineteenth century.” Industrialization
and the railroads provided the catalyst for the county seat wars in West
Virginia that when mixed with a combustible political atmosphere, and economic
prosperity, local leaders were willing to straddle the fringe of legal boundaries
to accomplish their goals.

When Virginia formed Tucker County in 1856, the Virginia General Assembly named the small town of St. George as the county seat. Following the Civil War, and the formation of the state of West Virginia, St. George remained the county seat and experienced a string of bad luck from a fire in 1888 along with a population decrease. Tucker County resident Ward Parsons formed the new town named after him that the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railroad went directly through. Ward Parsons, seeking greater economic opportunities, petitioned the state for Parsons to become the county seat. By 1893, the town of Parsons gained enough votes and became the county seat, and as a result of the election, residents of St. George sought legal action to stop the transfer of the county seat to Parsons. As a result, Ward Parsons mustered a group of 200 armed men, and they marched to St. George and took the court records, documents, furniture, and even the bell hanging in the tower and brought the materials back to Parsons. 

The Tucker County Seat War 

Built in the center of Parsons, WV from 1901-1903, the Tucker County Bank Building is a three-story commercial building constructed of red brick. The building stands on the corner of First and Walnut Streets in the commercial center of the town. The third floor of the building still retains the original pressed tin ceiling in the meeting room and many other features of the upper floors remain unchanged.    The Tucker County Bank opened in 1900 and was originally operating out of the county courthouse. Parsons was in the midst of an economic boom and the bank grew quickly. It was clear from the beginning that the bank would need its own property, and plans for the building began the following year. When the building was completed in 1903, the bank relocated and began doing business from this location. The property was home to the bank until they relocated in 1969.   In addition to holding the Tucker County Bank, at times the building hosted a Masonic Lodge, the Board of Education, a variety of businesses, and a drug store. The Freemasons occupied the third floor of the building from 1905 until 2002 and traces of the Masonic seal are still visible on an attic window. The building's drug store was popular for its soda fountain which was added to the store after being purchased for $200 in 1917. The drug store was a community hub as both a popular gathering place and a central bus stop.   When the bank began planning its move in 1966, the company searched for a new owner. The building was sold in 1967 to W. Del Roy and Doris E. Harner, two local lawyers. The property was sold for only $1, on the condition that the bank would not have to pay rent unless they had not relocated by 1969. From the 1970s onward, the building frequently changed hands; until, in 2006, the building was purchased by the Parsons Revitalization Organization. The group is working on restoring the building to its original design where possible and revitalizing the interior. The Tucker County Bank Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

A center of business enterprises in Parsons from its earliest days, the Tucker County Bank was the first bank in the area. The three-story building built in 1903 displays elements of the Romanesque Revival style of architecture. Housing a variety of businesses and the local Freemasons for many years, the building was a social and economic hub. Currently owned by the Parsons Revitalization Organization, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. 

Tucker County Bank

Carrie Williams was represented by J.R. Clifford, an African American lawyer who would become one of the most important activists on behalf of racial equality in West Virginia. Together, Clifford and Williams ended the policy of ending the school term for Black children three months sooner than the term for white children. <blockquote>“She told him what had happened, that the school board was only going to pay her for three months — they were going to stop her term — even though the white kids were continuing,”  ... “He gave her this great piece of strategic advice, he told her ‘I want you to keep on teaching and live on your savings, and then after you’ve completed that, bring me all your records and we’ll file a suit against the Tucker County school board’ and that’s what Clifford did. And that’s what led to the Carrie Williams versus the Tucker County Board of Education, with JR Clifford as her lawyer and that was the case that was tried in Parsons and it all started right here in this little valley…” -Tom Rodd, Co-Creator of the J.R. Clifford Project.1</blockquote>Prior to 1887 when Clifford because the first African American Attorney in the state of West Virginia, he was a Civil War veteran, teacher, principal, and newspaper publisher. His newspaper, The Pioneer Press, was one of the longest published African American newspapers from 1887-1913. J.R Clifford was one of the first attorneys in the United Stated to challenge the segregated school system. After his success in Williams v. The Board of Education, he became a founder of the Niagra Movement along with W.E.B. DuBois in 1906 where he served as vice president of the organization. Clifford practiced law until he died at age 85, he was the most senior active lawyer in the state.

This historical marker shares the history of a landmark 19th-century civil rights case in the state of West Virginia. In response to a school board policy that created a much shorter school term for African American children in Tucker County, Black educator Carrie Williams challenged the board's racially discriminatory policy and won her case. As a result, Black children were able to spend the same number of weeks in school as white children, in the decades before the schools of Tucker County were integrated. This was also an important decision for Black educators who had previously earned much less than their white counterparts. In 2013, this historical marker was erected in honor of the landmark court case. The marker is located next to the courthouse where the trial occurred. This case was the first of its kind and helped to pave the way for other court decisions that challenged the existence of policies that limited educational opportunities on the basis of race. 

Carrie Williams vs. Tucker County (1892) Historical Marker 

Once hailed as a huge marker in Tucker County, the railroad traveled through many of the major towns such as Parsons,&nbsp;Thomas and&nbsp;Davis. While the&nbsp;trains primarily transported coal and lumber, companies like Southern States and the Woolen Mill shipped their products as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the years following 1888, lumber replaced farming as the chief industry in Parsons and the population skyrocketed.&nbsp;The National Register of Historic Places identifies the Western Maryland Depot as a "surviving remnant of this&nbsp;"boom" period,"&nbsp; The last train ran out of the Western Maryland Depot in 1958.&nbsp;

This late-Victorian Stick-style structure was a transportation hub of railroad passengers and commercial goods from Parsons, starting with the opening of the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway in 1889. Commercial goods associated with this railroad included mined coal and coke, as well as lumber.

Western Maryland Depot

The battle at Corricks Ford took place on July 13th, 1861 along the Cheat River as part of the western Virginia campaign. By later standards, the battle was a minor skirmish, with less than 700 total estimated casaulties. The battle was the end of a series of battles between the forces of Union General George B. McClellan and Confederate General Robert S. Garnett. McClellan had defeated part of Garnett's army on July 11, 1861 during the Battle of Rich Mountain. On hearing of the defeat, Garnett fell back toward Virginia with approximately 4,500 men around midnight that night. Garnett began to march towards Beverly, but had recieved false information implying that McClellan's men occupied the town. The Confederates then backtracked, and abandoned their efforts to secure the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, and trekked over Cheat Mountain towards the Cheat River Valley. General Thomas A. Morris then pursued the Confederates with the 14th Indiana Infantry on July 13th, 1861, and took over Garnett's forces that were located along the Cheat River. Garnett took it upon himself to guard the rear of the forces with means to delay the Union attacks as the Confederates were retreating. Garnett was shot off of his horse and became the first General to die in battle. Due to the Confederate's retreat and Garnett's death, the Union had sole control over the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike and ultimately western Virginia. Although there is a heartwarming story to General Garnett's death. The General's dead body somehow ended up in a bed of wildflowers. A Union soldier, who had attended West Point with Garnett, found the general's body and sent it back to his family in what was then western Virginia despite being on opposing forces. This act shows how true it was that families, loved ones, and friends were all forced to split during the Civil War. Today, monuments to the battle still stand in and around Parsons. According to the American Battlefield Trust, a boulder by the battlefield features a commemorative plaque. Another plaque was built near the Tucker County Courthouse in 1938.

The Corricks Ford Battlefield is located along the Cheat River and is from the first campaign of the Civil War. The battlefield is now partially preserved thanks to efforts by local preservationists and the City of Parsons. During the battle of Corricks Ford, Confederate General Garnett became the first general of the Civil War to die in battle. 

History in the Town of Parsons

Darkish Knob

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information