History of West Virginia

In 1861, a strongly pro-slavery US State of Virginia broke off from the United States to become part of the pro-slavery union called the Conservative States of America. This controversial and very conservative and racist union included Texas, Florida, the US State of Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and both North and South Carolinas. You would think that by seceding from the Union, everyone in Virginia was happy about it (apart from the slaves who were in agony over having to work endlessly and were prone to being punished severely). Actually, no. There was a region in the west of the state that wanted to be part of the rest of the USA and support the Union overall.

As a result that same year, a convention was held where northwestern Virginian Southern Unionists banded together to try and repeal the Ordinance of Secession that Virginia imposed in order to leave the United States. There were two Wheeling Conventions with the first being held in May 1861, before the official vote on secession oddly enough and then a second following the Secession Ordinance being approved. Eventually, their pleas reached Washington DC which eventually saw on 20^th June 1863, West Virginia became a state in the United States of America courtesy of Abraham Lincoln and his men in government. At that time, the 35^th State was the youngest state east of the Mississippi River.

As for the song West Virginia (Take me home, country roads), that came about in the 1970s. Songwriting couple Bill Danoff and his wife Taffy Nivert were composing a ballad inspired by the winding roads of western Maryland. This soon became about Massachusetts which while did fit the song’s meter better than Maryland was inevitably replaced by West Virginia as said state fitted better with the song. Not only had Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert never been to West Virginia but neither had the song’s singer John Denver who was from Colorado (the Centenary State as it became a US State in 1876, 100 years after the birth of the USA). After tweaking some of the lyrics, John Denver recorded the song as the A-Side of a 45 in 1971. The song’s beauty and pride for the state (bar the first stanza mentioning two geographical features that only touch the eastern panhandle of the state like the Shenandoah River and the Blue Ridge Mountains) made it an immediate hit in West Virginia! So much so that a student or graduate of West Virginia University in Morgantown made the song “Take me home, Country Roads” its pre (American) football game anthem as early as 1972! Anyone who shows up to their games without knowing the lyrics off by heart risks exposing oneself as a non-Mountaineer. The song has also become West Virginia’s unofficial state anthem for many years before officially becoming it in 2014.