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Barbour County History
The County of Barbour was named for Philip Pendleton Barbour, a graduate of William and Mary, who was a lawyer, member of the Virginia Legislature, Judge of the Virginia Court, Virginia Congressman, and Judge of the Circuit Court of the United States for Eastern Virginia. In 1836, he became Judge of the United States Supreme Court. In March of 1843, Barbour County was established by the Virginia Legislature. The actual line around the county was surveyed in the same year at a cost of eighty-six dollars.
One hundred years earlier, western Virginia was almost entirely virgin forest and used by the Indians as a hunting ground. An Indian Village was found in the Cove District of the county. According to Hu Maxwell, white settlers did not establish homes in Barbour County until settlements had been planted in all of the bordering territory. John and Samuel Pringle are the first white men believed to have set foot in what is now Barbour County. The Pringles deserted the garrison at Fort Pitt after the French and Indian War, traveling through Barbour in 1762 finally making their home in a large, hollow sycamore tree near present day Buckhannon.
 John
McMillan, a Presbyterian missionary, traveled the banks
of the Tygart River in 1775 preaching at frontier settlements.
The area had been made safe from Indian attack by the
peace treaty that followed Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.
Indian attacks resumed in 1777 instigated by the British
as their response to the Declaration of Independence of
1776. The first group of early settlers arrived in 1772
but was dispersed by the Indian massacres in the early
1780's. A second group arrived after the end of the Revolution
in 1783 but left for economic reasons. A third group arrived
after the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution in
1787. Early settlers arrived by pack train over Indian
trials, as there were no roads. They followed the rivers
and creeks and settled in the valleys and river bottoms,
often at the junctions of the trails and rivers, and near
the fords where ferries and bridges would be built. They
built forts to protect them from the Indians.
More History...
Historic Communities in Barbour County
First Land Battle
Covered Bridges of Barbour County
Flags Over Philippi
Barbour County Fair
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