Barboursville: Named for a Virginia Governor

Barboursville began as a small settlement on the Guyandotte River. When Cabell County was organized, the village was chartered in eighteen thirteen and renamed for James Barbour, then the governor of Virginia. Barbour was a notable figure: after the War of eighteen twelve he went on to serve as a United States Senator and later as Secretary of War under President John Quincy Adams.

Barboursville became the county seat of Cabell County in eighteen fourteen, a role it held for over seventy years. In eighteen eighty-seven, the railroad town of Huntington wrested that status away. Today Barboursville is one of the larger communities in Cabell County, remembered as a place that outlasted its own county seat status and kept growing regardless.