Mason County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,453. Its county seat and largest city is Point Pleasant. The county was founded in 1804 and named for George Mason, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention. Before the Civil War, the county was in the State of Virginia.
Point Pleasant is a city in and the county seat of Mason County, West Virginia, United States, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. The population was 4,101 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Point Pleasant micropolitan area extending into Ohio. The town is best known for the Mothman, a purported humanoid creature reportedly sighted in the area that has become a part of West Virginia folklore.
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 Battle of Point Pleasant, also known as the Battle of Kanawha and the Battle of Great Kanawha, was the only major action of Dunmore's War. It was fought on October 10, 1774, between the Virginia militia and Shawnee and Mingo warriors. Along the Ohio River near modern-day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, forces under the Shawnee chief Cornstalk attacked Virginia militiamen under Colonel Andrew Lewis, hoping to halt Lewis's advance into the Ohio Valley. After a long and furious battle, Cornstalk retreated. After the battle, the Virginians, along with a second force led by Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, marched into the Ohio Valley and compelled Cornstalk to agree to a treaty, which ended the 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 He first appears in historical documents in 1764, when he was one of the hostages surrendered to the British as part of the peace negotiations ending Pontiac's War.
Pickaway Plains is a wide area of rolling hills beginning about 3 miles south of Circleville, Ohio, and extending several miles to the north and south. This geological area was formed by sand and gravel deposited by melting water from the last glacier to retreat from the region during the Ice Age. During the time of inhabitation by the Shawnee, the Pickaway Plains were covered by prairie vegetation, mainly grasses.
John Harvie was an American Founding Father, lawyer and builder from Virginia. He was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he signed the Articles of Confederation, in 1777 and 1778. He was a successful lawyer and landowner, as well as the fourth mayor of Richmond, Virginia. Thomas Jefferson was a friend since his childhood; his father was Jefferson's guardian. He negotiated a peace treaty in 1774 after the Battle of Point Pleasant. During the American Revolutionary War, he was on the Board of War and operated a prison of war camp on his property, The Barracks.
Andrew Lewis was an Irish-born American surveyor, military officer and politician. Born in County Donegal, he moved with his family to the British colony of Virginia at a young age. A colonel in the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, and brigadier general in the American Revolutionary War, his most famous victory was the Battle of Point Pleasant in Dunmore's War in 1774, although he also drove Lord Dunmore's forces from Norfolk and Gwynn's Island in 1776. He also helped found Liberty Hall in 1776.
The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.
Michael Cresap was a frontiersman born in Maryland, British America.
Fort Randolph was an American Revolutionary War fort which stood at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, on the site of present-day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, United States.
Anne Bailey was a British-born American story teller and frontier scout who served in the fights of the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War. Her single-person ride in search of an urgently needed powder supply for the endangered Clendenin's Settlement was used as the template for Charles Robb's 1861 poem "Anne Bailey's Ride". She is known as the Heroine of the Kanawha Valley.
Colonel John Stuart was a Revolutionary War commander and pioneering western Virginia settler. A veteran of the Battle of Point Pleasant (1774), he surveyed and settled the Greenbrier Valley and is known locally as the "Father of Greenbrier County". Owing to his Memoir of Indian Wars and Other Occurrences, written in 1799, he has been called "the most important chronicler of pioneer history in southern West Virginia".
Olivia Nye Simpson Poffenbarger was an American newspaper owner/editor, historian, social activist, civic leader, and Republican politician in West Virginia.
Sampson Mathews was an American merchant, soldier, and legislator in the colony of Virginia.
Captain Matthew Arbuckle Sr., was a pioneering hunter and trapper of western Virginia and the Ohio territory. He is considered likely to have been the first white person to travel through Virginia all the way to the Ohio River, other than as a prisoner of the Indians. This trapping and trading trip may have occurred around 1764.
Lewis Magisterial District is one of ten magisterial districts in Mason County, West Virginia, United States. The district was originally established as a civil township in 1863, and converted into a magisterial district in 1872. In 2020, Robinson District was home to 5,635 people.
William Morris Jr. was a Virginia military officer, ranger, spy, attorney, and politician who served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing in Kanawha County, Virginia from 1792 - 1801. Morris served alongside Daniel Boone during the American Revolution and during the Northwest Indian War. He is best known as the first permanent European settler in the Kanawha Valley, and often misrepresented for his father. In 1800, Morris was appointed as one of the commissioners for supervising the Presidential Election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. He was also associated to James Monroe, who Morris exchanged letters with during his time in the Virginia House during Monroe's tenure as governor.
Leonard Morris, Gent born Morriss was an American spy, justice and sheriff, and was one of the founders of Charleston, West Virginia in 1789. As compensation for serving as a Spy during the American Revolution Leonard was granted large tracts of land in the Kanawha Region and became a freeholder, in addition he was made Justice of Kanawha County in 1789, where he received the title of gentleman, part of the gentry class. While holding no official military rank in the militia, Leonard was serving as an agent for the state of Virginia under General Andrew Lewis and George Washington.
Thomas Ingles was a Virginia pioneer, frontiersman and soldier. He was the son of William Ingles and Mary Draper Ingles. He, his mother and his younger brother were captured by Shawnee Indians and although his mother escaped, Thomas remained with the Shawnee until age 17, when his father paid a ransom and brought him back to Virginia. He later served in the Virginia militia, reaching the rank of colonel by 1780.
