Gilmer County and Glenville

You are in Gilmer County, West Virginia, carved out of Kanawha and Lewis counties on February third, eighteen forty five. It was named for Thomas Walker Gilmer, a Virginia governor who, less than a year before the county was formed, was killed in a freak naval accident when a gun exploded aboard the warship Princeton. The county seat is Glenville, but its location was once hotly contested.

A rival settlement called DeKalb, named for a Revolutionary War hero, competed for the honor, and the residents ultimately chose Glenville instead. Samuel Hays laid out the town in eighteen forty five along the West Fork of the Little Kanawha River, and it was incorporated in eighteen fifty six. The first courthouse went up in eighteen fifty, and the handsome courthouse standing today dates to nineteen twenty three.

This has long been quiet country of hills, hollows, and small farms in the heart of the state.