Glenville and the Ford

You are in Glenville, the county seat of Gilmer County, set in a bend of the Little Kanawha River. Long before it had a name, travelers called this spot the Ford, because it was a shallow place where you could cross the river. When pioneers of European descent settled here in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, that crossing made the difference.

Gilmer County was carved out in eighteen forty-five and named for Thomas Gilmer, a governor of Virginia, and Glenville became the county seat. The town took the name Glenville because it sits low in a glen, a narrow valley. In eighteen seventy-two the state planted a teacher-training school here.

It grew through a century of name changes, from normal school to teachers college to Glenville State College, and finally, in twenty twenty-two, to Glenville State University.