Wellsburg

By David S. Zuchowski

(shared with us by Carl Virgin)

    Wellsburg, in West Virginia's northern panhandle, claims to be the state's oldest town on the Ohio River.  Wheeling, Wellsburgers argue, may have been settled earlier. But Wellsburg won the race for official recognition from the state - Virginia back then - as far as incorporation goes. Fact of the matter is, this picturesque river town is also the second oldest settlement on the Ohio River in the entire nation, second only to Marietta, Ohio.

    The first white men to set eyes on the area were probably French explorers who came in canoes down the Ohio exploring the unknown North American interior for their king.  There they left their mark and substantiated their claim to the land by burying iron plates in the ground along the riverbank.

    The Cox brothers, Jonathan, Friend and Israel, from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, were the first English speaking settlers to settle 400 acres on the banks of the river by using what was known in colonial times as the tomahawk right.  The Coxes, like all other 18th century settlers, simply gouged out some of the bark on the trees that fringed their property to gain title to the land.  Later, the intrepid brothers built a simple log cabin, then headed back to Brownsville for the winter.

    The following year they returned to redefine their homestead boundaries and take up permanent residence. Just how permanent their stay was is a matter of interpretation.  Eileen Avery, vice president of the local Brooke County Historical Society, says that two of the Coxes were slain by Indians, one in the area, another in Ohio while hunting.  "Very little is known about the third one," she says "although we think he might  have lived to a ripe old age. We still have some of his descendants living around town."

    A fourth Cox, a cousin of George, later made another claim in the upper end of town near Cross  Creek.  Here he stayed and prospered, so much so that he eventually built a large house.  One interesting legend has it that he traded some of his land for a simple rifle. This may not reflect much on George's business acumen by contemporary standards, but back then, a rifle was often a matter of life or death.

    The next important bit of history occurred in 1788, when Charles Prather, another of the town's "founding fathers" purchased 481 acres from the Cox Brothers. Three years later, Prather surveyed and laid out the town in a grid that paralleled the banks of the Ohio River.

    The little river town grew rapidly enough that, by 1791, the state of Virginia granted it a charter with the incorporated name of Charlestown. The name stood as such for the next 25 years, though not without creating a bit of confusion; in a state that already had a Charleston and a Charles Town.  Finally, in 1816, the residents decided to end their town's identity problems and chose to rename it Wellsburg, in honor of Charles Wells, the man who married Prather's only daughter.

    The Ohio was one of the young nation's most important avenues of commerce, and Wellsburg took advantage of its position along the busy waterway by becoming an early important river port.  Although the town's population had burgeoned to some 1,000 inhabitants by 1812, the river was only partly responsible for its growth.  Wellsburg had also become a center for the glass and paper-making industries.

    When the town's first glass factory opened in 1813, it marked the beginning of an industrial trend that would grow as fast and large as Jack's fabled beanstalk.   During the peak of the glass-making era, 35 to 40 factories operated in or near the city limits.  One of them made American industrial history after patenting the ruby-colored glass used to make traffic red lights and train lanterns.

    Wellsburg residents till like to tell the story of the time when their town vied with Wheeling as a routing point for the National Pike.  In the early 1800's, plans for the route of the federally commissioned road between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, Pennsylvania, had already been drawn, but the rest of the way - the segment between Washington and the Ohio River - was still in doubt. Some disgruntled Wellsburgers say that when Henry Clay visited the area, he was wined and dined (some even hint at more) by a prominent female Wheeling socialite. Eventually, Wheeling got the nod for the road, even though it's 34 miles from Washington (ten miles farther than Wellsburg). This, they argue, made the road much more costly to build.  Wellsburg, they say, was the better choice, from a cost-effective consideration alone.

    Whether it's a case of sour grapes or not, some suggest that Clay even went so far as to have the road built past the house of his hostess, necessitating the construction of a specifically designed S-shaped bridge that remains in place to this day.  Whatever their reasoning, Wellsburgers did burn Henry Clay in effigy when they found out about his decision.

    Like a lot of other river towns, Wellsburg has been damaged by numerous floods over the years.  On five occasions between 1884 and 1942 alone, the river, normally 23-24 feet deep, crested at 50 feet or more.  The record high-water mark occurred on March 19, 1936, when the river rose to 54.5 feet.

    Several attempts to protect the town from flood dangers have been made.  In the 1830's, for instance, a flood wall was built.   You can still find remnants of it, mostly under water, inundated by the construction of several navigational dams along the river that came later.

    In the 1700's, the town's riverbanks were nothing more than takeoff points for flatboats loaded with goods, heading to markets in the South.  In the following century, the wharfside area grew by extending some 20 feet out into the river and acting as anchor points for paddlewheelers and steamboats.  Original cobblestones from the old wharf, left over from a century and a half ago, still line the waterside.

    Large, leafy sycamore trees, thought to be at least 150 years old, shade the current promontory that looks out over a sweeping curve in the river just below town.  These trees are so ancient that they are said to have witnessed the swearing in of Union soldiers on their way south to fight in the Civil War.

    Today, much of the earlier riverfront bustle is gone. But from a wharf-side gazebo at the top of the river- bank, you can still look out on the docks where contemporary riverboats like the Delta and Mississippi Queens tie up and imagine what a hubbub it must have been a century or so ago.

    One of the town's oldest buildings - at one time Miller's tavern, now the Brooke County Historical Museum - lies just across the street.  The first floor of the two-story building is full of memorabilia, mostly donated by local, civic-minded citizens - furniture made by regional carpenters from the mid-1800's, antique clothing, and a colonial kitchen full of old utensils.  Other things, like a large centennial plaque made from 76 different West Virginia woods and designed to honor the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, was exhibited at the Smithsonian and returned to Wellsburg in time for its own bicentennial in 1991.  Of course, locally made glass objects get a prominent display in this glass-making town, which boasts such producers as Riverside (1879-1907),  McCarty Torreyson (1842-1856),  Star (1893) and Eagle (1894-1923).

    Eileen Avery, one of the museum's more active supporters, says that "a lot of glass objects can still be found in our Wellsburg homes." She recalls visiting a friend one day when the subject of area glass making came up.  Sometime during the conversation, Avery asked her friend if she still had some locally made glass objects around.  Her friend then proceeded to open up her drawers and cupboards. "There were stacks and stacks of local glass items everywhere".

    On most weekdays, you can find Anthony J. Cipriani, Sr., one of the town's greatest promoters, an ex-mayor, and author of the book Wellsburg W. Va. 1791-1991 in his office on Charles Street.  Here, he now works as a volunteer for the Chamber of Commerce.

    Cipriani was mayor during the  implementation of Bayer aspirin's nationally known "Wellness Program" in Wellsburg.  He was acquainted with the program from day one, when it was only an idea on the drawing board.

    "Somewhere around December of 1987, I received a letter from Bayer's public relations people," he says, "I was excited to read that they were considering our town as the site of a fitness program that intended to focus on heart disease and the steps people could take to prevent it - things like proper nutrition, exercise weight control and elimination of stress."

    When Cipriani and various other city officials met with the staff from Bayer, they found out the pharmaceutical firm was considering spending a considerable sum of money on the project over a two-year period; in return, Bayer said it would require 1,000 Wellsburg participants to take part in the pilot program, which could then be used as a model all over the country.  Initially, the participants would be asked for a complete health profile, which would include blood and cholesterol tests, blood pressure measurements, and general physical.  Over the next two years, they were to be  given quarterly screenings to determine the effectiveness of the program in reducing the risk of heart disease.

    " I told Bayer that if they were looking for a town that would give them 100 percent cooperation and all the volunteers they needed, they'd be wasting their time looking anywhere else," says the ex-mayor, "After all, our little town thinks nothing of traveling four hours on a bus to see our high school football team play an away game. We're such fans and town supporters that we'd end up with more people at the game than the home team. That tells you something about our level of community support."

    Bayer was convinced by the arguments put forth by the city officials and staged a formal kickoff of the project in March of 1988.  Nutrition and aerobic classes were held, some of them in local school gyms.  Walking as an exercise is good health was also encouraged. To help people stop smoking, special clinics were set up for that purpose.

    "We learned a lot from the project," says Cipriani, "My own son got help to quit smoking and hasn't  started up since. Even today, you'll see more people walking and jogging in our street than in comparable towns."

       "We did have our share of negative people too," he says, "people who resisted trying the Bayer suggestions and asked why they were trying to cram things down our throats. But, I think that even some of these know that the program really worked and took up their recommendations in private."

    Fitness is one thing, but from 1900 to 1940, Wellsburg as also known as the "Marrying Town".  What made it so was the fact that West Virginia didn't have a three-day waiting period, customary in most other states, between the issuance of a license and the church or civil ceremony. Wellsburg, with its advantages of being close to the population centers of Pittsburgh and Youngstown and of having a train depot that delivered them right to its doorstep, became a marriage mecca; people from out of state could come in and tie the nuptial bond in a matter of hours, rather than waiting for days.

    Fast-service weddings turned out to be a multi-million-dollar-a-year business.  The County Clerk alone is said to have earned $12,000 in income during the height of the  Depression, just from the sale of marriage certificates. She was on a 24-hour-a-day call and even worked out of her home.

    Taxi drivers often became expert at spotting couples walking nervously around town.  They'd stop and ask them if they intended to get married. If the answer was yes, they'd try to sell them "package deals" that included trips to the County Clerk for a license, to a church or justice of the peace, then to the train depot for the return ride home.  They'd even offer to include a bottle of booze to help the newlyweds celebrate their honeymoon.

    At its heights, Wellsburg's preachers, justices of the peace and ministers performed close to 5,000 weddings a year.  By 1940, though, the bubble had burst. Because of the large number of underage brides and grooms, among them the daughter of a prominent politician who is said to have gotten very angry after learning of the impromptu marriage, a law was passed mandating a three-day waiting period.  This stopped the marriage mill in Wellsburg.

    Tom Zurbach, who operated a bus touring service that brings more than 100 coaches into town each year, says that he used the Marrying Town image as a nostalgic hook. "Many of our bus group visitors know of someone married in Wellsburg during the heyday of its on-the-spot weddings.  To entertain them, I conduct a mock mass wedding ceremony in the town square. I have a preacher meet them as they get off the bus.  Then, I pass out song sheets, issue ersatz marriage certificates, and have the minister "marry" them on the spot.  For a final touch, I serve cookies and coffee as part of the wedding reception."

    As Wellsburg celebrated its bicentennial in 1991, it looked to both its past and its future.  As to its history, part of the preparation for the year-round celebration included the renovation of a two-block area around the county courthouse.  This turned one of the town's busiest streets into a pedestrian mall, complete with trees, brick sidewalks and period lighting.

    The project got started when someone  brought Henry Brown, an expert in the field of historic restoration, into town from nearby Bethany College, where he was working at the time.  "He looked over the wharf and walked around looking at  buildings and the architecture and got excited at what he saw, " say Cipriani, "He was instrumental in getting part of downtown on the National Register and suggested that we apply for a Community Development Block Grant.  One was eventually awarded to us.

    Since then, several building facades have been refurbished to reflect their Victorian Era construction.  A developing interest in historic edifices led to a walking tour (now temporarily defunct) of the downtown area. It included places like Watzman's Old Place Co-Op, a bee-hive of antique dealers who rent space in the old buildings, the Brooke Glass Company, Wellsburg's only surviving glass-making industry, where tours are offered almost daily, and a family-run shoe store whose roots go back to 1866.

     As to the future, a good place to start is Howard Armstrong's office on the second floor of a renovated building on Charles Street, now the town's main thoroughfare.  Armstrong formed the DIC or Downtown Investment  Corporation whose goal is to get local investors and bankers to develop Wellsburg further. 

    Armstrong comes across as a visionary.  He considers the river to be Wellsburg's biggest asset, now as in the past. "each year" he says, "more and more people are taking to boating. To capitalize on this fact, I'd like to see us develop our riverfront by putting in restaurants, shops and a marina."

    The businessman sees tourism as one way to pumping more money into the local economy. To draw tourists to the area, Armstrong is working on plans to put the ferryboat that crossed the river between Wellsburg and Brilliant, Ohio back into service.

    "You wouldn't believe how many people have never ridden a ferryboat in their lives and would be thrilled to do so, " he says, "It'd draw a lot of people.  Another viable project would be using some of our old railroad track to run a trolley on from one end of town to the other".

    "I'd also like to see Charles Street turned into a pedestrian mall for about two or three block area. And I'd like to have more shops open up, as well as a craft center where people could see the work-in-progress of craftsmen like blacksmiths, tanners, potters, weavers, chandlers, soap-makers and stained-glass artisans." The town already has two first-class bed and  breakfast establishments to handle the current tourist trade. The Wellsburg Inn, a three story restored Victorian, is situated on Main Street right in the heart of the town. The house was built in 1896 by Doctor Benjamin Harden who practiced medicine there for 57 years. The doctor was only 5 feet 4 inches tall, so many of the original doorknobs that were placed to accommodate his stature are still in place.

    Current owners Michael and Barbara Ashcroft rent three bedrooms and two suites in their cozy and antique laden home. Mrs. Ashcroft was born and raised in Wellsburg but lived elsewhere for 20 years after her marriage.

    "Wellsburg never leaves you, "she says, " I kept wanting to come back to the town of my youth for a long time. It was partly nostalgia and partly the fact that it's a great place to raise children that brought us back."

    Another bed and breakfast enterprise, Elmhurst Manor, sits atop Pleasant Avenue, a street lined with the houses built by the town's business and professional elite.  This antebellum mansion rests on three acres of landscaped lawns and gardens, reminders of the days when families like the Paulls and Tarrs didn't hesitate for one  moment to manifest their wealth with conspicuous grace, style and ornamentation.  The house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been magnificently restored by Carol and Bill Lynn, an energetic young couple bent on preserving the past, while, at the same time, offering their guests the comforts of the present.

    Back in the mayor's office, in a refurbished building that was once the Palace Theater and now houses a half dozen businesses, Nancy Caldwell was entertaining some listeners with stories of Wellsburg History. Caldwell, granddaughter of  I.H. Duval, a Civil War general, is herself founder of the Brooke County Historical Society and author of a book titled A History of Brooke County. 

    "Did you know that Wellsburg has the only known monument to an apple in the world?" she asked, "It honors the discovery of Thomas Grimes who developed the Grimes Golden apple in 1802.  You can find it out on Route 27 E in a small roadside park."

    This revelation prompted others in the group to ask her to name other Wellsburg noteworthies.  She responded without hesitating, rattling off their names like they were next door neighbors. "One of them, a Captain Oliver Brown, was a Revolutionary War hero. He led the band of patriots that toppled the statue of King George III in New York City. The colonists later melted it down to make ammunition that was used in their battles against the British.  Brown also fought at the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill and crossed the Delaware with Washington.  After the war was over he settled in the area. He and his descendants are buried in Brooke Cemetery."

    "Another fellow rather worth mentioning is Patrick Gass, one of the survivors of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Northwest.  He wrote a journal of the trip that was later published in book form.  Gass lived to the ripe old age of 99, as far as we can determine and was buried on his farm on Washington Pike.  Later his body was moved to Brooke Cemetery."

    In a pre-Civil War barn made with hand-hewn beams that sits atop one of the highest points in the county, Sharon Harper runs her Brooke Hills summer theater of five shows - three comedies and two musicals.  This spunky woman has been doing this sort of thing for more than two decades now and, over the years, has managed to build an average yearly audience of 5,000 using local actors and a paid staff of six technicians (lighting, sound, costumes and sets).

       "Most of my actors work during the day as steelworkers, accountants, lawyers and housewives," she says, "they do summer theater because they love it. And they're good at it. Their talents should be displayed."

    Although Harper does have the economic advantage of being able to use the barn rent free - (it's located in Brooke Hills Park, which was left to the county by some very civic-minded people) one detects that hard work, intelligence and determination also played a big role in making the theater the long-running success it has become.

    Just a mile farther east is the historic Drover's Inn, a large brick building completed in 1848. From the very beginning of its existence the sixteen room three story brick building was used to house travelers, especially drovers or animal drivers who passed by with their pigs, cattle, and fowl on the way to market in the East. The current building is utilized as a restaurant, while a nearby gift shop belies its original function as a  honeymoon cottage.

    From here, the drive back into Wellsburg is all downhill, and quite a steep one at that.  The valley below sort of pops up at you from out of nowhere, just when you least expect it.  Then there's the Ohio River still plodding its way around town, just as it has done for more than 200 years.

    As Wellsburg enters its third century, it seems content. Changed from its early days, it is but ready to look forward to the future as it cherishes its past.

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Please note.  some of the places mentioned in this article are no longer here, and then, there are new places to visit and things to do.

Look at the part of this web site that is titled "Around Wellsburg"  and for photos look under "Archives" and "Localities".

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Brooke County Genealogy