re at West Virginia Public Broadcasting we’ve been asking listeners what they wonder most about West Virginia. The latest question that won out in an online poll came to us from St. Albans resident Trish Hatfield. She asked “Where does the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ come from?” WVPB reached out to experts across the state and discovered one of the first times the phrase was found in a publication — and we have a good idea why it has stuck around.
The latest question that won out in an online poll came to us from St. Albans resident Trish Hatfield. She asked “Where does the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ come from?” WVPB reached out to experts across the state and discovered one of the first times the phrase was found in a publication — and we have a good idea why it has stuck around.
“West by God Virginia” is an idiom many West Virginians know well, but its exact origins have traditionally been less well-understood.
West Virginia University linguistics professor Kirk Hazen did some digging for us into the phrase. The earliest printed version he found was in a Virginia magazine published in 1926 called “The Virginia Spectator.” It reads:
“And it is, we believe, the only way that corn can be mixed and presented to a girl — except the iron plated ones from West (by God) Virginia.”
The Virginia Spectator, 1926
The article was written by students at the University of Virginia who, in the middle of the prohibition, are likely alluding to making alcohol, Hazen said.
He said the quote is basically saying West Virginia women can hold their liquor.
“And the implication here is that they are accustomed to drinking homemade corn liquor,” he explained. “So, they can handle it without having to mix it up in certain concoctions.”
Hazen discovered this publication with the help from a Google Books application called Ngram Viewer. It’s an online tool that sifts through a massive digital database of millions of publications in several languages.
This screenshot of Google’s Ngram Viewer shows a peak in the published phrase “West by God Virginia” in the early 1960s — perhaps due to the centennial celebration of West Virginia in 1963. Courtesy of Kirk Hazen
Hazen said the phrase likely appeared in written form earlier than 1926, but to confirm that it would take months of sifting through physical documents, such as newspaper clippings, journals, books and magazines.
Hazen found another early publication of the phrase in 1939 in an academic article published by WVU’s English department. The phrase is found in a footnote written by Harold Wentworth. The quote explores the possible history behind “West by God Virginia.” It reads:
“Among phrases so formed is the well-known ‘West by God Virginia.’ But the expletive insertion here is more syntactical than morphological. One story of the origin of this phrase, true or not, is that a native West Virginian, irked at being called a Virginian, retorted with an intonation that can only be suggested here, ‘not Virginia, but West by God Virginia.’”
Harold Wentworth, WVU Department of English, 1939
The exact origin of “West by God Virginia” as a spoken phrase is difficult to pinpoint.
Hazen points out how most spoken language is almost a living organic thing — not something that’s tracked, monitored, sorted or in databases.
But Hazen and other experts say there’s a good chance the phrase made its first oral appearance sometime after West Virginia became a state in 1863. But they say this is educated guesswork.
WVU Linguistics Professor Kirk Hazen. Hazen found one of the earliest uses of “West by God Virginia” in a publication from 1926 about corn liquor. Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Hathaway has been working on a book that explores the cultural history of the term “Mountaineer.” She points to parallels between the origins of “Mountaineer” and the phrase “West by God Virginia.”
“The first time the term Mountaineer shows up as a synonym for West Virginian is before statehood,” she noted.
Hathaway said before we separated from Virginia, there was a legislator from Harrison County who sent a letter to a newspaper in Richmond expressing annoyance that his region, western Virginia, was not being fairly represented in the Virginia Legislature.
And when he signed that letter?
“He signed it, not with his name, but as a Mountaineer,” Hathaway explained. “So, I sort of see that as being parallel to the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ in the sense that it’s just kind of a way of reminding both ourselves and outsiders that we are distinct from Virginia, and we have a unique identity and a unique history as West Virginians.”
WVU Associate English Professor Rosemary Hathaway. Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
But none of this answers the underlying question — why did people start inserting “by God” into the name of West Virginia?
The use of “by God” in language dates back to the Anglo-Saxons, but it became common place in the 1600s, according to Eric Waggoner, the executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Waggoner is also a retired history of English teacher.
Waggoner said “by God” has always been used as a way to emphasize something. He sees the inclusion of it in “West by God Virginia” as an expression of pride, when so much of the world perceives West Virginia in a negative light.
“There’s been a sort of narrative about West Virginia that focuses on illness; it focuses on poverty; it focuses on hard times; it focuses on this sort of thin, cultural, and educational infrastructure; a lot of things that are here that need attention and that people who live here know intimately,” Waggoner explained.
He said many West Virginians are tired and fed up with this negative narrative, and by adding “by God” into our state name, our identity, it allows us to reclaim our image.
“There’s a kind of expression of pride, not just in place, but in being a person who is from this place, that ‘West by God Virginia’ seems to articulate in a very handy, in a very positive way,” he said.
Even though the exact origin of the spoken phrase may be difficult to find, Waggoner and others said today it’s often used to illustrate West Virginia as unique and separate from Virginia – that, by God, we are here, we exist, and we have our own identity as West Virginians.
Our most recent Wild Wondering West Virginia question came from Wheeling resident Brian Joseph. He wanted to know about the Appalachian Mountains and their sister mountains, and how they shape who we are.
“Sometimes we forget. We think we are who we are, but remember even our state motto: Montani Semper Liberi – which is, mountaineers will always be free.”
We set out, meandering among the hills of central Appalachia, to understand the history of the ground beneath our feet — something many people spend a lifetime exploring. The Appalachians’ 1.2 billion-year history may surprise you, because while many people consider the range among the oldest on Earth, it might also be the youngest.
A Farmer’s Dilemma
Farmer and nonprofit founder Danny Swan stepped out of a young grove of mixed hardwoods onto a steep slope in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.
(L – R) Danny Swan, executive director of Grow Ohio Valley, stands with Isa Campbell, manager of the organization’s orchard, looking on at one of the peach trees that’s thriving in calcium-rich soil.
“And now what we are walking up to, just came into view, is our apple orchard.”
Swan is the executive director of Grow Ohio Valley, a non-profit that wants to improve communities around here through local food. He wanted to grow blueberries on this hillside, but can’t because of what happened here several hundred million years ago.
“250 million years ago,” he explained, “we were underwater — this was the Permian Period — underwater in a shallow ocean with an ecosystem that looks a lot like modern day coral reefs. What are coral reefs primarily composed of? Calcium.”
Turns out, blueberries are not into growing in calcium rich soil for reasons we should have learned about in high school.
“So here we are standing on top of a mountain in the rust belt Appalachian city of Wheeling, West Virginia, working against agricultural problems that are the result of an ecological system that was happening 250-300 million years ago.”
The young apple trees here, though, appear to be thriving. Swan is making it work. But in order to do that well, he did find himself literally and figuratively dipping into the story of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s a story that shapes what he’s doing, what he’s eating, what he’s feeding his community, and well, we are what we eat.
“How do you date mountains? We don’t have a way of dating topography. But we can date rocks,” said professor of geology at WVU Steve Kite.
Hints in the Hills
To think about the lifespan of a mountain range is to impose a human sense of time on geology. Humans can live 100 years; mountains typically live 100 million years. The Appalachian region is more than a billion years old. While it’s commonly thought that the Appalachian chain is one of the oldest on the planet – the reality is complicated.
“The rocks in the Blue Ridge [Mountains] in particular are about 1.2 billion years old,” geology professor at West Virginia University Steve Kite said. “Well, when writing began they were 1.2 billion years old. When human beings became a species on the face of the earth, they were 1.2 billion years old. The perspective of geologic time is just astounding.”
Kite explained that the rocks in the Appalachians are not actually the oldest in the world.
“The oldest rocks on Earth are probably in northern Canada at about 4 billion years old, and there’s some in Greenland that are 3.8 billion years old. So we’re not looking at the oldest rocks on Earth, but they’re certainly old.”
And they do tell us a long, detailed story about the region — with some plot twists.
Appalachia is actually home to some substantially younger rocks, because only a couple of geologic weeks ago (50 million human years) there were volcanoes here.
“For some reason, and it doesn’t fit into any plate tectonic model, volcanoes popped up along the Highland County-Pendleton County area. So we have some remnants. The volcanoes have eroded away, but we have the feeder tubes that led up to those volcanoes preserved in our geologic record over there.”
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Of course there was a day when the Appalachian land mass was sitting at the equator. At that point, the mountains were big (think Himalayans). Since then, they completely eroded away to nothing, and then grew back. This cycle has taken place several times. Kite explained that what might be considered the birth of the Appalachian range happened a billion years ago when an early supercontinent came together and fused parts of what is now North and South America together.
“There were a couple mountain building episodes and those mountains formed, and then they wore down. Things were kind of quiet. Then, those mountains formed even later – about 450 million years ago – and those wore down, and things were kind of quiet. And then about 360 million years ago, another mountain building episode, and then the big Alleghenian mountain building episode.”
He was describing Pangea – the most recent supercontinent. (The range born then predates dinosaurs by at least 100 million years, by the way.) And those mountains have also long since eroded away. Gone 150 million years ago.
Here’s another plot twist: geologists don’t quite know how to explain how the Appalachian Mountains that exist here today exist at all.
“The Appalachian Mountains have popped back up. The topography that we see today really dates back to the last 20 million years or so.”
Kite explained that scientists have only recently discovered and begun to build theories explaining this geologic mystery.
“It might be indirectly related to the mountain-building episodes that are going on in the West Coast — the Laramide episode that gives us the Rocky Mountains. You can think about it — if there’s a train wreck on the far side of the mountains there’s likely to be stresses transmitted pretty far.”
There are other theories as well, but the long and short of it is, the mountains seem to be growing again. So ours is very much a story of rebirth. You could argue that the Appalachians are one of the oldest AND maybe one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world…
On the way to Aït Benhaddou. The Atlas Mountains is a mountain range across the northwestern stretch of Africa extending about 2,500 km through Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
Brothers and Sisters in the Sister Mountains
The mountain remnants that give us clues today also exists in northern Europe, Scotland and in northern Africa, the Atlas Mountains. Today, the Atlas Mountains don’t really look anything like Appalachia. Researchers estimate that people first inhabited both the Appalachian and the Atlas Mountains around the same time – roughly 14,000 years ago. But time and latitudes have shaped the ranges very differently.
It would be great to be able to explore the Atlas Mountains and speak with people in mountain communities and see how they live and what they value. Here in West Virginia, for example, the state motto is Montani Semper Libre — Mountaineers are always free. Similar themes emphasizing freedom exist in the Atlas Mountains, where the people call themselves Amazeer which means “free people.” Ikram Benaicha, an Amazeeren woman who lived for a spell in Charleston, West Virginia explained.
“The Atlas Mountains are wild and beautiful,” Benaicha recalled.
She grew up visiting her grandparents in a town surrounded by the Atlas Mountains. It’s where her dad grew up.
“I have a lot of memories as a kid. We used to go once a year. We used to listen to those beautiful songs in the Amazeer language. Every time I want to travel in time and space, I just play one of those songs, and it just makes my day.”
“The geography shaped not only my grandparents, but my dad. It has shaped me, as well,” Benaicha said. “Back in the day, it was very hard to live in the mountains. They used to lack access to improved sanitation and safe water.”
“My dad taught me to be determined. He used to tell me stories from his childhood — how tough it was and how committed he had to be. My dad is my hero. He’s the purist version of an ambitious person from the Atlas Mountains.”
People native to the mountains have been called “Berber,” but Benaicha explained that the term is offensive, because it connotes being backward or uncivilized, which is not totally unlike terms like “redneck” and “hillbilly.” Benaicha said it misrepresents the Amazeeren – the free people.
“The Atlas Mountains are the perfect place to see calmness and joy,” she said. “The Amazeer communities are very welcoming and very generous. And honestly I have noticed a lot of similarities once I was in West Virginia.”
Benaicha came to West Virginia in 2015 to get a master’s degree at West Virginia State University.
“Once I arrived to Charleston, I felt home,” she recalled. “I think it’s the link that I have with my roots. That’s something that I’m very, very proud of.”
Benaicha also mentioned that she used to listen to country music when she was back home in Morocco. She says artists like Reba McEntire struck a chord with her.
Poets, Musicians and Geologists
Just as it can be difficult to grasp geologic time, it can be equally challenging to clearly identify the ways that geography shapes us culturally. In the same breath, nothing can be more influential. Steve Kite, the geologist from WVU, explains that the Appalachians, for example, make it hard to get around, and that may fundamentally shape culture.
“The topography of the Appalachians – it’s steep. We may be steeper than Colorado. Not higher,” he explained, “but steeper.”
Steep slopes make it harder to get around, carving out smaller, isolated communities.
“I think isolation of communities winds up making us more locally based and locally focused on our concerns than you would find in a landscape that was flatter or easier to move around in,” Kite said.
Perhaps it’s the musicians and poets who are able to best capture and articulate what it means to be born and shaped of this place. Wheeling resident and West Virginia poet laureate Marc Harshman offered some insight:
“I do believe that there is a presence that emanates from one’s local place/locale and the particular presence ‘felt’ here in Appalachia is especially strong. Perhaps, in part, because the challenging topography has meant in the past/historically that this region was more cut off from the mainstream than other portions of the U.S.
Likewise, certain stories and folkways persisted longer than anywhere else in the U.S. except for native American communities. That fuels a cultural richness than simply can not be denied – it’s certainly informed our character as a people who traditionally have taken the time to tell stories, make their own—finish that how you will – jams, gardens, music, literature.
You simply cannot read the work of Appalachia’s greatest artists without quickly feeling this ‘mountain’ presence: Robert Morgan, Irene, Wendell Berry, Maggie, James Still, Denise Giardina, and so many others… Even avant garde painters and musicians like George Crumb – his many ‘folk song’ compositions or Robert Villamagna’s tin collages littered with images of the upper Ohio Valley, mountains in collision with smokestacks… or Paula Clendenin’s ‘Coal Series’ or her ‘weeds’ and many mountains, or Caroline Jennings’ recent art prints with the backdrop of old New River photographs.”
Harshman also points to his own work imprinted by place. He was recently commissioned to write a poem celebrating Wheeling’s 250th birthday. Harshman shared this segment:
WHEELING AT 250 Three-hundred million years ago, from low-lying, Carboniferous swamps, from alluvial sands and beds of shale, sandstone, and coal came these lumpy and rugged, green rolling hills cut by hundreds of streams and rivers. Just two-hundred fifty years ago came from the east most of our forebears who came and saw this wide and pleasant valley, came towards La Salle’s la belle riviere and, though beautiful in French, it’s the native tongue lasted: Oi-yo became Ohio. And despite unimaginable hardships our forebears kept coming, Came here to this comely set of bottom lands where roads of water and land still meet, came, and kept coming. …
Perhaps poets and musicians are best able to illustrate the indescribable, deep and ancient mountain roots that connect us to the ground that holds us from generation to generation, shaping the farmers, scientists, travellers and storytellers that we become — just reflections of the mountains that are born, grow, die away, and… are reborn.
Original music in the audio version of this story was composed by Matt Jackfert.
It’s time for you to choose the next story for Wild, Wondering West Virginia, our series devoted to answering questions about the Mountain State.
Last time, you voted for Jaime Wichterman’s question about Native American History in West Virginia. Round 2 is underway and it’s up to you to decide, West Virginia!
Along the banks of the Ohio River and other waterways, there are several places where — after a heavy rain — Native American artifacts still crop up today. Despite these clues, archeologists and historians haven’t been able to paint a clear picture of the people who lived here before white settlers.
Artifacts have led archeologists to believe people first came to the region about 14,000 years ago, hunting woolly mammoths and dodging sabertooth cats. There were also people here 2,500 years ago building mounds. But most of what is known outside of that revolves around tribes that lived in the region around the late 1600’s — tribes forced to relocate in the mid 1800’s. And there’s a lot of speculation about that, too.
Tracing Tribal Territorial Footprint
One thing we can confirm: there was a Native American presence during that time. This may seem obvious, but Wayne Appleton with the Appalachian American Indian Association says it’s worth pointing out.
“The official state position is that there were no indians here when the white settlers arrived. Nobody knows why, but they weren’t. And the fact is, that’s nonsense,” Appleton said.
According to Wheeling Heritage museum coordinator Travis Henline, one tribe that had a particularly commanding presence along the Ohio River were the Shawnee.
“When we’re talking about late 17th and through the 18th century, this is Shawnee territory,” Henline explained. “The first Europeans to colonize this area were the French. They encountered what we call the Shawnee.”
The Shawnee lived in the upper Ohio Valley and could be found as far south as the Kanawha River. They fought with a group of tribes from the northeast known as the Iroquois Nation.
The Delaware tribe also lived here, but were pushed out of the Eastern Panhandle by the late 1700s. Seneca and Mohawk tribes lived in north-central West Virginia, near Morgantown.
The early history of southern West Virginia is less understood.
Many experts, like Travis Henline in Wheeling, say land there was connected to the Cherokee tribe, but only tangentially.
“From the south bank of the Kanawha to the southern part of the state is ceded in the treaty of hard labor by the Cherokee. Did they control it? Not really. Were they there? Well, not really. They were willing to sell it.”
Bonnie Brown, the head of Native American Studies at West Virginia University, speculates that there could have been a stronger connection.
“From my understanding the Cherokee did not consider West Virginia homeland, but instead hunting land, and hunting land might mean they were there six months out of the year or more,” Brown said.
What did they leave behind?
So it’s unclear which tribe of how many people, where, when, and for how long lived in West Virginia, the Native American presence in the state lingers. Native American names can be found throughout Appalachia, like the Kanawha River, Seneca Rocks, Wheeling.
Credit Shayla Klein / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
But Bonnie Brown says aside from scattered artifacts and names, there’s something that remains that is more tangible: people.
“Certainly descendents are still here,” she said. “There are people here who identify with a tribe that was here at an earlier point in history.”
“Hungry for their history.”
Some experts estimate that about 11,000 Native American descendents live in West Virginia. One of those is Wayne Appleton, the member of the Appalachian American Indian Association. Appleton, also known today as Chief Grey Owl, has Cherokee roots on his father’s side and Mohawk on his mother’s side. He moved from West Virginia with his family when he was three.
Appleton remembers discovering his native heritage a few years later, in Utah, after hearing tales from Native American elders who lived around him.
“I was about five years old,” he recalled. “I marched in and informed my mom I was going to be an Indian when I grew up. She told me I already was one. And I still remember how incredible that feeling was. I just pumped my fist and said, ‘Yeah!’ That was an important part of my emotional development.”
Appleton went on to earn a doctorate in chemistry. But he’s just as passionate about the role he plays with the Appalachian American Indian Association, trying to help people like himself find their Native American roots.
“You bring together people, you try to help people make contact with their history, with their heritage, and you try to help them fill in the gaps. They’re hungry for their history.”
Credit Cory Knollinger
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Ohio River in Wheeling, W.Va.
Jamie Withcherman, who wanted us to look into this question, told us a great-grandmother was of Cherokee descent. Kayaking on the Ohio River makes Jamie think about her. But you don’t need a specific person, or specific attachment to the place you’re at to think about those who came before us. Next time you’re near the Kanawha River, or in Mingo County, or kayaking down the Ohio, take a second and try to imagine where that name came from, and more importantly, who came up with it.
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