Tag: Point Pleasant

August 18, 1749: de Blainville Plate Sets French Claim to Ohio Valley

On August 18, 1749, explorer Pierre-Joseph Celoron de Blainville buried a lead plate at Point Pleasant as part of his task to claim the entire Ohio Valley for France.

In the mid-1700s, France and Great Britain were continually on the brink of war around the world, particularly in places where the two nations contended for the same land.

Perhaps no place was more tense than the North American frontier, which included most of present West Virginia.

Earlier in August 1749, Celoron de Blainville, accompanied by 230 Canadian militia and Indian guides, had buried a lead plate at the junction of Wheeling Creek and the Ohio River. The explorers then traveled down the Ohio to the mouth of the Kanawha River at present Point Pleasant and buried another plate. In all, Celoron buried four plates along the Ohio, but his effort ultimately failed. Great Britain’s victory in the ensuing French and Indian War forced the French from the region, and France surrendered to the British all claims on the Ohio Valley.

The Point Pleasant plate was found by a boy playing on the riverbank in 1846.

West Virginia Mothman Festival Postponed Due To Virus Outbreak

An annual festival that commemorates a local legend about a “Mothman” in West Virginia has been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

If the festival honoring the legend of the red-eyed creature’s sightings in Point Pleasant was held this September as previously scheduled, it would “be subpar and lackluster to what has been built over the last 18 years,” organizers for the event said on Facebook while announcing the change Thursday. The festival has now been moved to September 2021.

Admission to the event held in downtown Point Pleasant is free to the public and features live music and cosplay. Visitors have to pay a fee to see the Mothman Museum and for some attractions, according to the festival.

December 4, 1883: Reformer Stella Fuller Born

Social reformer Stella Fuller was born in Point Pleasant on December 4, 1883. After graduating from a Huntington business college, she worked for a law firm in Welch. At age 23, she returned to Huntington and became actively involved in the Salvation Army. Her work with the organization turned into an obsession. She even lived for 20 years in the group’s citadel building.

However, her independent leadership style often brought her into conflict with Salvation Army officials. For instance, she organized a softball team that played on Sundays in violation of the group’s rules. Salvation Army officials thought Fuller was wielding too much power and was insubordinate. As a result of the disagreement, she split from the group at age 59 and founded her own relief organization on Huntington’s Washington Avenue. The Stella Fuller Settlement became the city’s largest haven for the disadvantaged and homeless. She would play a prominent role with the settlement for the next 37 years. Stella Fuller died in 1981 at the age of 97. The settlement closed its doors in 2009, and the building that housed it burned down in 2012.

October 10, 1774: The Battle of Point Pleasant is Fought

On October 10, 1774, perhaps the most important battle ever fought in present-day West Virginia occurred at Point Pleasant. It was preceded by a long spring and summer of deadly violence between settlers and Indians. In response to these hostilities, Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore dispatched two armies to attack Shawnee villages in Ohio. Dunmore personally led the northern army, while the southern column was under Colonel Andrew Lewis.

Shawnee Chief Cornstalk closely scouted both forces. He decided to attack Lewis’s troops at Point Pleasant before they could unite with Dunmore’s army. During the battle, both sides numbered about 1,000, and the struggle was intense. Much of the fighting involved brutal hand-to-hand combat. Late in the day, Cornstalk misread a flanking movement by the Virginians as a sign of reinforcements. He surrendered the battlefield and retreated across the Ohio River.

The resulting treaty, which was signed five months before the Revolutionary War began, brought relative peace to the region. Although the truce proved temporary, it kept American soldiers from fighting a two-front war and allowed them to focus on the British for the first two years of the conflict.

September 13, 1862: The Battle of Charleston Begins

On September 13, 1862, Charleston residents awoke to the sound of artillery. It was part of a Confederate push to take control of the region after 5,000 Union troops had been transferred from the Kanawha Valley to defend Washington. This left the remaining Union forces, led Joseph A. J. Lightburn, badly outnumbered.

  

The Battle of Charleston began in the East End near the site of the current capitol. By late morning, Union troops had withdrawn to the downtown area, where they torched a number of buildings to keep them out of enemy hands. The retreating Federals then cut the cables on an Elk River suspension bridge to slow pursuing Confederates.

Despite suffering a crushing defeat, Lightburn was able to maintain a continual skirmish line along his 50-mile retreat to Point Pleasant, while keeping his wagon supply train from falling into enemy hands. Unionist townsfolk and liberated local slaves joined in “Lightburn’s Retreat,” filling the Kanawha River with boats of all kinds and clogging the roads. The Confederate occupation of Charleston lasted scarcely six weeks before Federals reoccupied the valley for the rest of the war.

January 22, 1927: Confederate General John McCausland Died

Confederate Brigadier General John McCausland died at his Mason County home on January 22, 1927. He was 90 years old and the next-to-the-last living Confederate general. He was survived by a little more than a year by Felix Robertson.

McCausland had grown up at Henderson, near Point Pleasant. In 1857, he graduated first in his class at the Virginia Military Institute and returned a year later to teach mathematics.

When Virginia seceded from the Union at the beginning of the Civil War, McCausland organized the 36th Virginia Infantry. However, he is best remembered for one act. In July 1864, he ordered his cavalry to burn the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, after its citizens refused to pay $100,000 in gold. The destruction of Chambersburg was in retaliation for Union General David Hunter’s devastating raid on the Shenandoah Valley.

After the war, McCausland fled the country to avoid prosecution for burning Chambersburg. He returned in 1867 and bought his farm in Mason County, where he lived the rest of his life as an unrepentant rebel. He was officially pardoned by President Ulysses S. Grant.

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