WHO LIVED HERE FIRST?
Our history begins over
1000 years ago. In Bolivar, Native
American artifacts have been found from the 12th Century—300 years
before Columbus arrived in the New World.
The Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia was the home of tribes of the
Iroquois Nation when European settlers first arrived. The Delaware and Shawnee tribes hunted in the area during spring
and summer seasons. Explorer Louis
Michel, looking for land for a Swiss settlement, reported Indians in the area
during his 1706 travels along the west bank of the Potomac River.
HOW WAS THE AREA
GOVERNED?
Soon after the 1607
establishment of Jamestown, Virginia, English settlers moved inland and grew in
numbers to establish the Colony of Virginia for the Royal Crown. The Colony was divided into eight counties
in 1634, and the land, which is now Bolivar, was part of the Indian District of
Cickacoan. The Eastern Panhandle was
part of Virginia until 1863 when the State of West Virginia was admitted to the
Union during the Civil War. At varying
times in history, we were part of Essex County (1691-1720), Spotsylvania
(1720-34), Orange (1734-38), Frederick (1738-72) and Berkeley County. In 1800, residents of southern Berkeley
circulated a petition to become a separate county to be called Richland. One hundred eighty seven white property
owners signed the petition set to the Virginia General Assembly. The Virginia Assembly responded in January
of 1801 by declaring a new county to be cut from Southern Berkeley County, and
naming it in honor of the sitting President, Thomas Jefferson. During the Civil War (1863) that state of
West Virginia, cut from the larger state of Virginia, was admitted to the
Union.
WHO LIVED HERE AND HOW
DID THEY GET THE LAND?
King
Charles II of England granted the land that became Jefferson County to Thomas,
Lord Fairfax. An Iroquois Treaty opened
the Blue Ridge to English settlement.
Fairfax sold some of his five million acres to speculators, farmers and
businessmen including Robert Harper and Gersham Keyes who bought in this
area. Harper was a Philadelphia
architect who settled in “The Hole” at the confluence of the Shenandoah and
Potomac Rivers. He ran a ferry service
across the Potomac from what was then called Shenandoah Falls. In time, the town at the confluence of the
Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers became Harpers Ferry. Keyes settled on land, which is now within the township of
Bolivar and built his home and tavern on Washington Street. According to tax records for 1790, Keyes
owned a grist mill, saw mill, smithy (blacksmith shop), and two
distilleries. He grew wheat and corn,
and owned 10 horses, 16 each cows and pigs, 32 sheep and seven pet deer. Keyes owned eight books, an indication of
wealth and education. Keyes also owned two slaves, likely a house servant and
skilled worker rather than agricultural slaves.
Smaller divisions of land
were sold from the three major land grants. These were farms, homes and a small
town named Mudfort. In 1810, Charles Varle surveyed the area and noted Mudfort had
“A good tavern, several large stores for goods, a library, a physician and a
Professor of English….” By 1825, the
town population was 270.
The county set rates for
various commercial enterprises, including tavern and boarding house costs. If you were to stay at Mr. Keyes “ordinary”
or tavern, your costs would be:
Overnight
7 cents
Breakfast
10 cents
Supper 28
cents
Board for your horse 10 cents
Quart of whiskey $1.25
Heirs of Robert Harper
sold much of their land during the period before 1830, including lands upon
which the US built an armory in 1796.
Harper’s heir, his nephew John Wager, never saw his land, but his son,
also named John, settled in Mudfort on tracts north and east of Washington
Street. He owned land and public
accommodations in Harpers Ferry and bought land in Charles Town.
According to oral history,
Mudfort got its name because of boys with good throwing arms. Children from Harpers Ferry would come up
the hill on what is now Washington Street, and be repelled by the boys of
Mudfort who literally used mud balls to send the approaching children back.
In 1825, citizens of
Mudfort and surrounding lands petitioned the Virginia Assembly to become a
town, named after South American freedom fighter Simon Bolivar. Approval from the Assembly was granted in
December of 1825 and the town of Bolivar came into existence 16 years before
Harpers Ferry was granted a charter.
The armory in Harpers
Ferry was a large part of the economic engine that drove development in the
Eastern Panhandle. But most of the land
was agricultural, with wheat and corn as primary crops. Plantation style agriculture was
concentrated in the Southwest portion of the county. Farmers in and near Bolivar had less land to work. They owned and
operated gristmills, distilleries and smelting facilities. While one third of the county was African
American, mostly slave laborers, Bolivar’s African American population was 10
percent of the town, and a number of freedmen settled here before the Civil War.
Harpers Ferry employed
large numbers of workers, but Bolivar was home to farmers, merchants and
skilled armorers. The numbers of
transient workers in Harpers Ferry was high; the number of long-term residents
in Bolivar was high. Prior to the Civil
War, armory workers who put down roots often selected Bolivar. In the 1820 census, for example, William
Smallwood is listed as a skilled rifle borer at the armory, renting a small
house in Mudfort. By the mid 1830s,
Smallwood had purchased a home from the Wager estate, and had begun
farming. By the late 1840s, Smallwood
had a family, a store and a farm, which reached as far as Bolivar Heights.
WHAT DID EARLY SETTLERS
LEAVE BEHIND FOR US?
Construction in Bolivar
began with log structures. Easily
kilned clay in the area made building with brick affordable to many middle
class residents. Stone construction was
popular in the late 18th Century,
and all of these types of
materials can be seen in homes today.
The unique Armorers House style is brick, and often a duplex. These homes date to the early 1800s.
Smokehouses and well
houses of brick still sit in backyards, and a public well house is in the
middle of Bolivar Children’s Park.
HOW WERE CHILDREN
EDUCATED?
The population of Bolivar
continued to grow until the Civil War, with stores, farms, taverns and schools
serving the community. Many early
schoolhouses were on Gilbert Street.
Public academies for boys existed in Jefferson County as early as 1762 with a curriculum including reading,
writing, arithmetic and surveying. In
1795 Charles Town Academy was founded to teach basics as well as Latin and
Greek, with expansion to include French, English, geography, astronomy and
philosophy as enrollment grew. While educational institutions often included the
word public in their titles, schools were maintained by subscription—what each
family paid--and donations.
A similar academy in
Charles Town was later established to teach girls and included many of the same
subjects as boys were taught.
Some families employed tutors or sent their children to “Professors” who were free lance educators teaching from their lodgings or church facilities.
In 1846 the Virginia
General Assembly authorized free schools in several counties including
Jefferson. A local election followed
approving free schools by a 7 to l majority.
Restricted to the 3 R’s and when possible English, geography, history
and philosophy, children in the County could go to school regardless of the
ability of their parents to pay. Free
and public education did not mean the same thing in the 19th Century
that it does today. While indigent
children between the ages of 5 and 21 could attend free, other children paid 50
cents per quarter year. The first year
of operation of the Jefferson County School System cost $10,000 to fund 23
schools serving 1100 students.
Teacher’s pay in the 1840s was between $275 and $300 a year.
By 1856, public schools
were firmly established in Bolivar and Jefferson County.
WHAT HAPPENED TO
BOLIVAR DURING THE CIVIL WAR?
Part of Virginia, the
Eastern Panhandle supplied soldiers to both the Confederacy and Union. In the spring of 1861, Bolivar Heights was
the scene of recruitment into the Virginia infantry and Calvary. Known as Camp Jackson after General
Stonewall Jackson, more recruits came to volunteer to march with Virginia than
with Union troops. The first AWOL
soldier from these Virginia Regiments was named Buzzard. He was from Bolivar and his family lived in
a house, which can still be seen today on Union Street. The question of allegiance in this far flung
Virginia county fractured along regional lines with industrialized Wheeling the
center of Union support and Shenandoah counties loyal to the State of Virginia,
and hence the Confederacy. In 1863,
West Virginia was formed as a new state and admitted to the Union. Because the Civil War still waged, the new
state was far from a unanimously happy new member of the Union. The benefits of becoming independent of
Virginia however, were attractive to those counties whose wealth was based on
industry, small farming, mining and transportation. Splitting a large Virginia served Union purposes as the war went
on, adding to the number of Union states by cutting a new state from lands in
the Confederacy. Jefferson County’s
inclusion into West Virginia was not settled until 1871. The US Supreme Court ruled that a small poll
taken May 28, 1863 in the eastern panhandle was valid and that Jefferson and
Berkeley Counties were part of West Virginia, not Virginia.
The Eastern Panhandle was
the site or staging area for many Civil War battles, and the confluence of the
two rivers mirrored the confluence of spying from each side, and scavenging
from local farms and families. As a
battle site, Bolivar is best known for an engagement which resulted in the
largest Union surrender in the history of the war. Twelve thousand Union troops were captured in the Battle of
Bolivar Heights. Advances and retreats by
Union and Confederate troops laid waste to much of the area through battle damage
and fire. Property values were cut in
half, and many residents left the area.
And a few Union soldiers came back to settle. According to local newspapers, the
region was left “destitute” by the war. The Spirit of Jefferson and the Shepherdstown newspapers reported that returning soldiers did not see the prosperous farming and merchant community of Bolivar. The town was a weed overgrown track of land with some homes in burned ruins. Trees had been felled or their branches shot away.
HOW DID BOLIVAR FARE
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR?
The armory closed after
the Civil War and the industrial prosperity of the area came to a halt. The Federal government tried selling the
property and buildings and believed it was successful in 1869. But the purchasing group had wanted
ownership in order to file a lawsuit against a railroad. No payments were made
on the property. No improvements were
made either. A final sale was completed
only in 1884 when the armory land was sold to a pulp mill operator. In the meantime, floods in 1870 severely
damaged the buildings that were left along the Shenandoah and Potomac
Rivers. For almost 20 years after the
Civil War, industry in the eastern panhandle languished.
There were also labor
shortages for building and farming. A
number of African American freedmen lived in the area but a combination of
prejudice and lack of training kept unemployment numbers high. Local leaders sought both labor and capital
investment from the North. It came
slowly.
Today, there are 26 fewer people
living in Harpers Ferry-Bolivar than in the years just before the Civil
War. The area changed hands from
Confederate to Union at least seven times
and as many as 11 times. And still the
Civil War reached into the 20th Century.
In the 1900s, church
members of the Methodist Church in Bolivar found the remains of a Union soldier
who had crawled, wounded, near the foundation.
His remains were found 40 years later and identified by his buttons.
A Union officer of
Scottish background came back to the area shortly after the Civil War to build
a castle on Bolivar Heights which existed for 100 years on the site of what is
now National Park Service land and the scene of today’s annual 4th
of July fireworks.
Until the 1920s, a Civil
War cannon was moved from Camp Hill to the Point at Harpers Ferry each year and
a round of ordinance fired across the Potomac to Maryland.
A more positive outgrowth
of the Civil War was the establishment of Storer College on Camp Hill. For 90 years Storer College educated African
Americans, at first to be teachers through a two year college program, and
later in a four year program in all academic areas. The Storer campus houses
the Park Service today.
The county and the town of
Bolivar remained split between Unionists and Southern sympathizers after the
Civil War was over. Only 300 of the
voters registered before the war in Jefferson County could vote. Another 1500 could not because of prohibitions
against confederate soldiers and sympathizers from participation in
government.
The first years after the
war saw government by Unionists who became the Republican Party. Secessionists became the Democratic
Party. By the 1870s voting prohibitions
were gone and political parties were no longer identified with Civil War
ideas. A local Democrat elected from
Bolivar to the state legislature, E. Willis Wilson, went on to become Governor
in 1885-90 and then to serve several terms in the US Congress. The Governor E.
Willis Wilson home is on Washington Street in Bolivar.
A variety of textile and
paper mills powered by water sustained much of the local economy as those in
Bolivar continued farming and merchant activities. The population was much lower than it had been before the Civil
War and the economy fluctuated almost as much as the high water marks of the
Potomac. Floods were often named after
the time of year. For example the
Pumpkin Flood in the fall of 1870 damaged much of the water powered
industries. A major flood occurred in
1889 and the most devastating flood of all washed over Shepherdstown and
Harpers Ferry as well as other Potomac towns in 1936. But it was the floods in
the late 19th Century that effectively ended industrial production
in the area.
In the 1890s a series of
rumors led residents to believe Bolivar would enjoy a much needed economic
boom. From a lime quarry in
Kearneysville, to an alleged find of oil near Moler’s Cross Road, citizens felt
that development would soon follow discoveries of natural resources. In Bolivar, rumors of iron ore and high
quality marble were encouraged by a rich investment group from the North. Most of these hoped for economic booms did
not mature due to misrepresentations, lack of capital, and outright lies by
those pushing investment. The
possibilities, however, were real enough for investors in the county to build
office space. This optimism trickled
down to a small building boom in the county and in Bolivar. But the reality was that offices were not
inhabited for many years.
The late 19th
Century saw school improvements that had the strong support of local
taxpayers. A nine month school year was
instituted and in 1887 a new idea was adopted for Jefferson County’s rural
schools. The idea is a school as we
know it today. Students were assigned
grades by age and ability with specific goals for learning each year and
progression to graduation. Before this
time, some students were taught the same things year after year until they
left. Our innovative school
superintendent was William Wilson who went on to serve the Nation as Postmaster
General where he initiated rural postal delivery.
The early part of the 20th
Century posed social questions for Bolivar and Jefferson County. Prohibition passed in 1912, and women’s
suffrage was defeated by a 75 to 25 percent margin. At the same time, modern conveniences were being introduced to
Bolivar. A water generated electric
plant was constructed in 1901 across the Potomac, telephones were connected to
homes and businesses ($18 per year), and all roads but one became freeways by
1903. In 1909, Jefferson County won
second prize in a national contest to select the best country roads anywhere
between New York and the Roanoke. The
prize was $500. In 1912, Bolivar was
awarded the contract for construction of a high school but it was not until
1929 that a bond issue was approved for construction.
In World War I, Bolivar
and Jefferson County did more than their share to support US soldiers in
Europe. The county exceeded its quotas
on war bonds, Red Cross contributions, and sale of Victory Loans. Five hundred and forty eight men were
registered for service in the war and 30 lost their lives.
The war helped the local
economy, especially production of leather and harnesses for the cavalry. A $25 million investment in war materials
was a much needed boon to this struggling rural area.
State or national issues
did not consume life in Bolivar.
Farmers farmed, merchants bought and sold, and our town council and
mayor attended to streets, lighting, snow removal, maintenance and other day to
day responsibilities to keep the town running.
Some special circumstances
make this period of time interesting.
In 1899, the mayor received a number of complaints about cows wandering
the streets of Bolivar unattended. He
asked the town council to enforce an existing law about loose cows. Months later, there was still a problem and
the mayor ordered a fence to be built around the town jail (the white building
next to the community center). All
unattended cows were hauled to jail.
Owners had to post bail to retrieve the cows, but the problem seemed to
have been solved.
The independence of
Bolivar was shown in an incident in 1920.
The German Ambassador to the US was caught speeding in town. He was given a ticket but refused to
pay. The town insisted on payment of
the $5.60 ticket but the Ambassador claimed diplomatic immunity. The US State Department tried to intervene
and Bolivar finally backed down on payment of the ticket. Bolivar did not send an apology, however,
and the Governor of West Virginia stepped in to write one to the
Ambassador. The speed limit had just
been raised from 8 miles per hour for horses and automobiles to 10 miles per
hour.
Bolivar endured the
Depression-era difficulties of the entire Nation. As an agricultural community, however, farmers, churches and
neighbors met immediate family needs for food.
Bolivar and Jefferson County strongly supported the New Deal of
President Roosevelt and the work programs it brought to West Virginia including
a fishery located at Leetown.
World War II found Bolivar
again a strong supporter of the national government and the military. Hundred of soldiers served from Jefferson
County: dozens from Bolivar. World War
II marked a major change in Bolivar with the establishment of the National Park
at Harpers Ferry. The Park both
preserved and reconstructed our neighboring town. New bridges and highways opened our area to day tourists from the
Baltimore-Washington area. The
CharlesTown racetrack was another attraction, which began just before World War
II. Still a rural economy, Bolivar
became more interwoven with the regional economy and has shown itself resilient
in moving from an agricultural and self-contained merchant community into an
economic development area ranging from Frederick, Maryland to Winchester,
Virginia.
In 1999, a survey was
conducted in Bolivar to assess what residents wanted to preserve or change
about the town. As a result of this
survey, and ordinances which grew from it, Bolivar will retain its small town
character with increasing new initiatives such as the farm market held in
summers, the Childrens Park, and appropriate new businesses.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER
READING
Bushong, Millard K. A History of Jefferson County West Virginia
(CharlesTown, WV, Jefferson Publishing Company, 1941)
Norris, J.E., ed. History
of the Lower Shenandoah Valley (Berryville, VA:Virginia Book Company, 1890)
Williams, John A. West
Virginia (NY, Norton and Co., 1984)
Uncollected papers of the
Town of Bolivar (Bolivar Community Center), courtesy of Elizabeth Blake, Esq.
And special thanks to
William Theriault, author of numerous publications and articles and the CD-ROM Explorer:
The West Virginia History Database Jefferson County Module (West Virginia
Division of Culture and History, 1996)