Charleston WV – The following events happened on these dates in West Virginia history.
To read more, go to e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia at www.wvencyclopedia.org.
Jan. 23, 1888: Union leader Fred Mooney was born in a log cabin on Davis Creek in
Kanawha County. He was secretary-treasurer of United Mine Workers of America District 17
from 1917 to 1924 and was a radical leader in the West Virginia Mine Wars.
Jan. 23, 1890: The United Mine Workers was organized at a meeting in Columbus, Ohio.
Three months later, in Wheeling, UMWA District 17, encompassing most of West Virginia, held
its first meeting, elected M. F. Moran as district president and launched what became a struggle
of more than 40 years to unionize the state’s coal mines.
Jan. 23, 1903: The great rhododendron was designated the official state flower of West
Virginia.
Jan. 24, 1968: Mary Lou Retton was born in Fairmont. She made history at the 1984
Olympic Games in Los Angeles when, at 16, she became the first American woman ever to win
a gold medal in gymnastics and the first native West Virginia woman to win a gold medal in
Olympic competition.
Jan. 25, 1814: Francis Harrison Pierpont was born near Morgantown. On June 20, 1861,
Pierpont was unanimously elected as governor of the unionist Reorganized State of Virginia,
which sat at Wheeling until West Virginia entered the Union two years later.
Jan. 25, 1878: Activist Lenna Lowe Yost was born in Basnettville in Marion County.
She held key leadership roles in the woman’s suffrage and temperance movements.
Jan. 25, 1889: Anna Johnson Gates was born in Kanawha County. The state’s first
female state legislator, Gates was elected to the House of Delegates in 1922 and served a single
term.
Jan. 26, 1850: Wyoming County was formed by the Virginia General Assembly from
part of Logan County.
Jan. 26, 1960: Burnsville High School basketball player Danny Heater scored 135 points
in a varsity game against Widen, setting a national record. Heater went on to receive an academic
scholarship to attend the University of Richmond.
Jan. 27, 1925: Bernard L. Coffindaffer was born in Nicholas County. In the 1980s and
1990s, Coffindaffer erected clusters of crosses along the highways of West Virginia and much of
the Southeast.
Jan. 27., 1933: Folk artist George Connard Wolfe was born in Standard, Kanawha
County. A self-trained sculptor, he made his own tools from automobile leaf springs and engine
valves and worked in stone and wood.
Jan. 27-28, 1998: Flat Top on the Mercer-Raleigh county line received a record snowfall
of 35 inches in a 24-hour period.
Jan. 28, 1902: Miners Hospital No. One opened at Welch, with a young Dr. Henry
Hatfield as president. The legislature had passed a law requiring state hospitals for those engaged
in dangerous occupations, and eventually three hospitals for miners were built in different
sections of the state.
Jan. 28, 1937: In a flood that drove a million Ohio Valley residents from their homes, the
Ohio River crested at Huntington at 69.45 feet, more than 19 feet above flood stage. By the time
the water receded, five people were dead, and the city was in ruins. Parkersburg, Ravenswood
and Point Pleasant also were badly damaged.
