The History Project

Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle are famous for their marriages into European royalty, but before them West Virginian Katherine Elkins found herself at the center of a romance with an Italian duke that captured the world’s attention.

The facility’s very name informs us that the hospital was both built in antebellum Virginia and in an era when views about mental health were much less sophisticated. But there’s even more to the story than meets the eye in this landmark structure and its long history.

Lord Dunmore’s war comes to a violent conclusion as Colonel Lewis & The Virginia Militia clashes with Chief Cornstalk and his Shawnee warriors in Pt. Pleasant, which would increase hostility between settlers and settlers, and severe American loyalty to England.

Colonial America was a cauldron of imperialism and territorial disputes, which set in motion Lord Dunmore’s War, one of the continent’s most significant skirmishes which would help to launch the American Revolution.  

It is said that “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and when Martha Stewart was sentenced to serve five months in FPC, Alderson, the world learned more about American history-makers both well-regarded or social pariahs.

With two jutting panhandles and western and southern extremes, West Virginia’s unusual shape gives it four points like a compass rose, placing the Mountain State into the cross section of the Eastern United States.

West Virginia is the watershed of some of the nation’s most storied rivers, some scenic and others industrial, they first used for exploration but later used for commercial development, as they are still used today. 

In December 1952, country music legend Hank Williams released his last song, “I’ll Never Make it Out of this World Alive.” A few weeks later, on New Year’s Day, he was found dead in the backseat of his car in Oak Hill, West Virginia, with an unfinished song in his hand.

While the American Revolution battles in the coastal states were fought between America’s Continental Army and England’s Redcoats, the battles of the interior became extensions of skirmishes with Native Americans, spurred by the British that outlasted the Revolution itself. 

After his great success recruiting from the Shenandoah Valley, George Washington reached further into Western Virginia to draw its riflemen to serve in the American Revolution, whom he turned into a vast arm of the Continental Army. The 8th Virginia Regiment for alongside Washington in battle and suffered the winter with him in Valley Forge.