Belleville | |
|---|---|
  Belleville Location within the state of West Virginia  Belleville Belleville (the United States) | |
| Coordinates: 39°07′29″N81°44′10″W / 39.12472°N 81.73611°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | West Virginia |
| County | Wood |
| Elevation | 594 ft (181 m) |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| ZIP code | 26133 [2] |
| Area code(s) | 304 and 681 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1553848 [1] |
Belleville (also Belville) is an unincorporated community in Wood County, West Virginia, United States.
In April 1999, Belleville HydroElectric, a 42 MW hydroelectricity power station, began operating on the East side of the Belleville Locks and Dam which are operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. [3] The plant is operated by AMP-Ohio now known as American Municipal Power, Inc. (AMP).
Pre European Settlement
Several thousand Hurons occupied present-day West Virginia during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. During the 17th century, the Iroquois Confederacy (then consisting of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca tribes) drove the Hurons from the state and used it primarily as a hunting ground. [4]
When Anglo-European peoples first came into this part of the Ohio Valley, no Native American tribe had permanent residence there. The tribal home of the Delaware nation was on the upper Muskingum. The Shawnees lived on the Scioto and the Great Hocking, and Miamis on the two rivers of that name. The Wyandottes occupied the country near the lakes. These tribes had traditions that at one time they had lived on the Ohio, but on-going conflict with the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Six Nations, made the mid-Ohio river valley a contested region. The area was regularly used as a native hunting and fishing ground up to colonial settlement. [5]
Colonial
In 1744, Virginia officials purchased the Iroquois title of ownership to the lands west of the Virginia colonial frontier to the Ohio river in the Treaty of Lancaster. [4]
The Delaware, Mingo, and Shawnee sided with the French during the French and Indian War (1755-1763). When the War concluded, England’s King George III feared that more tension between Native Americans and settlers was inevitable. [4] King George III in his Proclamation of 1763, prohibited settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. [4] This proclamation said in part: "We do hereby forbid on pain of our displeasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases or settlement whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands so reserved without our special leave or license." [5]
Following the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 all tribal lands south and east of the Ohio River were ceded to the Crown down to the mouth of the Tennessee River, [4] and settlements sprang up all along the Ohio River. However, settlement was still legally limited. Legal title to land was not available until 1779, making it difficult to determine the area's first permanent European settlers. [6] [4]
In 1769, Captain William Crawford and several others surveyed lands on behalf of George Washington who was granted, by Robert Dinwiddie, the Governor of colonial Virginia, over 9,000 acres of land along the Ohio River for his service during the French and Indian War (1755-1763), to include the land at Belleville. [4] In 1770, George Washington led a surveying party down the Ohio River from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) and explored the area personally. [6] Washington received an official land grant for the lands he chose in Botetourt county on December 15, 1772. [5] Washington sold the Belleville land tract to a land company for development.
Founding
In 1785, William Tilden, President of William Tilton and Company, a mercantile firm of Philadelphia [7] with extensive land holdings along the Ohio River, to include the Belleville land tract purchased from Washington, entered into a business agreement with Joseph Wood of Pittsburgh. Wood was contracted to act as a land agent for the company and recruit prospective settlers. A colonizing expedition left Pittsburgh in the Fall of 1785 with the two men, four Scotch pioneer families from Pennsylvania, [8] and several hired hands, and sailed down the Ohio River landing in present-day Belleville on December 16, 1785. They constructed a block house surrounded by a stockade and over the course of the next year cleared over 100 acres of land for cultivation, built several cabins, and named their new settlement Belleville. The 1785 settlers included James Pewthewer, William Ingals, David Jemerson (Jamison), Andrew McCash, Francis Andrews, and a Mr. McDonal, Mr. Greathouse, Mr. Tabor (Taylor), and Thomas Gilruth. [6] [8] In 1787 they were joined by the following persons: Joel and Joseph Dewey, Stephen Sherrod, Malcolm Colman, Petre and Andres Anderson and their families. About the year 1796 or 1797 the settlement at Bellville received additional of immigrants from Connecticut. This party was led by George D. Avery, a professional surveyor and civil engineer. Avery was granted leave to construct a dam on nearby Lee Creek near the falls and built a mill January 5, 1803 [8] which served as a base for Avery's merchandise business there in connection with shipbuilding. [7]
Civil War
The only major military action in Wood county was at Belleville on July 19, 1863, when Confederate General John H. Morgan attempted to cross the Ohio River after his raid through southern Ohio was ended by Union troops led by General Edward H. Hobson. [9] The United States gunboat Moose and the armed steamer Allegheny Belle, part of the Union's Ohio River Fleet, Mississippi River Squadron, intercepted Morgan's troops as the men attempted to cross the Ohio River. Three hundred raiders successfully entered West Virginia while the remaining followed General Morgan into northern Ohio. [10]
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on their native allies.
Marshall County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 30,591. Its county seat is Moundsville. With its southern border at what would be a continuation of the Mason-Dixon line to the Ohio River, it forms the base of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III on 7 October 1763. It followed the Treaty of Paris (1763), which formally ended the Seven Years' War and transferred French territory in North America to Great Britain. The Proclamation forbade all settlements west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, which was delineated as an Indian Reserve. Exclusion from the vast region of Trans-Appalachia created discontent between Britain and colonial land speculators and potential settlers. The proclamation and access to western lands was one of the first significant areas of dispute between Britain and the colonies and would become a contributing factor leading to the American Revolution. The 1763 proclamation line is more or less similar to the Eastern Continental Divide, extending from Georgia in the south to the divide's northern terminus near the middle of the northern border of Pennsylvania, where it intersects the northeasterly St. Lawrence Divide, and extends further through New England.
The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation through the Northwest Ordinance, it was the nation's first post-colonial organized incorporated territory.
The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase or the Henderson Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of Cherokee lands west of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains through the acceptance of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with most leading Cherokee chieftains then controlling these lands. In exchange for the land the tribes received goods worth, according to the estimates of some scholars, about 10,000 British pounds. To further complicate matters, this frontier land was also claimed by the Virginia Colony and a southern portion by Province of North Carolina.
The Beaver Wars, also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars, were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Great Lakes region which pitted the Iroquois against the Hurons, northern Algonquians and their French allies. As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.
The Ohio Country was a name used for a loosely defined region of colonial North America west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Lake Erie.
The Shawnee are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language.
Lord Dunmore's War, also known as Dunmore's War, was a brief conflict in fall 1774 between the British Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo in the trans-Appalachian region of the colony south of the Ohio River. Broadly, the war included events between May and October 1774. The governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, who in May 1774, asked the House of Burgesses to declare a state of war with the Indians and call out the Virginia militia.
The Kanawha River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The largest inland waterway in West Virginia, its watershed has been a significant industrial region of the state since early in the 19th century.
The history of Pennsylvania stems back thousands of years when the first indigenous peoples occupied the area of what is now Pennsylvania. In 1681, Pennsylvania became an English colony when William Penn received a royal deed from King Charles II of England. Although European activity in the region precedes that date. The area was home to the Lenape, Susquehannocks, Iroquois, Erie, Shawnee, Arandiqiouia, and other American Indian tribes. Most of these tribes were driven off or reduced to remnants as a result of diseases, such as smallpox.
The Ohio Company, formally known as the Ohio Company of Virginia, was a land speculation company organized for the settlement by Virginians of the Ohio Country and to trade with the Native Americans. The company had a land grant from Britain and a treaty with Indians, but France also claimed the area, and the conflict helped provoke the outbreak of the French and Indian War.
Cornstalk was a Shawnee leader in the Ohio Country in the 1760s and 1770s. His name in the Shawnee language was Hokoleskwa. Little is known about his early life. He may have been born in the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1763, he reportedly led a raid against British American colonists in Pontiac's War. He first appears in historical documents in 1764, when he was one of the hostages surrendered to the British as part of the peace negotiations ending Pontiac's War.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty signed between representatives from the Iroquois and Great Britain in 1768 at Fort Stanwix. It was negotiated between Sir William Johnson, his deputy George Croghan, and representatives of the Iroquois.
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the Indigenous peoples whose tribal nations historically or currently are based in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
The Northwestern Confederacy, or Northwestern Indian Confederacy, was a loose confederacy of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region of the United States created after the American Revolutionary War. Formally, the confederacy referred to itself as the United Indian Nations, at their Confederate Council. It was known infrequently as the Miami Confederacy since many contemporaneous federal officials overestimated the influence and numerical strength of the Miami tribes based on the size of their principal city, Kekionga.
"Indian Reserve" is a historical term for the largely uncolonized land in North America that was claimed by France, ceded to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763) at the end of the Seven Years' War—also known as the French and Indian War—and set aside for the First Nations in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British government had contemplated establishing an Indian barrier state in a portion of the reserve west of the Appalachian Mountains, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes. British officials aspired to establish such a state even after the region was assigned to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War, but abandoned their efforts in 1814 after losing military control of the region during the War of 1812.
The Six Nations land cessions were a series of land cessions by the Haudenosaunee and Lenape which ceded large amounts of land, including both recently conquered territories acquired from other indigenous peoples in the Beaver Wars, and ancestral lands to the Thirteen Colonies and the United States. The land ceded covered, partially or in the entire, the U.S. states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina. They were bordered to the west by the Algonquian lands in the Ohio Country, Cherokee lands to the south, and Muscogee and Choctaw lands to the southeast.
Teedyuscung was known as "King of the Delawares". He worked to establish a permanent Lenape (Delaware) home in eastern Pennsylvania in the Lehigh, Susquehanna, and Delaware River valleys. Teedyuscung participated in the Treaty of Easton, which resulted in the surrender of Lenape claims to all lands in Pennsylvania. Following the treaty, the Lenape were forced to live under the control of the Iroquois in the Wyoming Valley near modern-day Wilkes-Barre. Teedyuscung was murdered by arsonists in the night of April 19, 1763. This marked the beginning of the end of the Lenape presence in Pennsylvania. Teedyuscung's son Chief Bull conducted a raid on the Wyoming Valley that was part of a greater Indian uprising. As a result, the Lenape were forced to move west of the Appalachian Mountains by the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
Indian removals in Ohio started in the late eighteenth century after the American victory in the Revolutionary War and the consequent opening of the Northwestern United States to European-American settlement. Native American tribes residing in the region banded together to resist settlement, resulting in the disastrous Northwest Indian War where the Native tribes ceded large swathes of territory to the American government. After the American victory in the war, several Indian reservations were established to forcibly relocate landless tribes to. The process of obtaining full American sovereignty over Indian territories in Ohio was complete around 1818, but continued in Indiana until 1840.
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