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Welcome to Boone County WV
History and Genealogy
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Boone County Courthouse
Madison was first established as the Boone County Court House. It was
burned during the American Civil War and was then incorporated in 1906 and named for Colonel William Madison Peyton,
a pioneer coal operator, who was a leader in the movement which resulted in the formation of Boone County.
Boone County is part of the Charleston, WV metropolitan area
Towns and Cities
Town of Danville -- City of Madison -- Town of Sylvester
Town of Whitesville
There are many unincorporated
communities
More County History
Boone
County was formed in 1847, and named in honor of
Daniel Boone, the founder of
Kentucky ,
and one of the representatives from
Kanawha
County
in the General Assembly of
Virginia in 1791.
The act
creating the county fixed the seat of justice on lands of Albert Allen, at
the mouth of Spruce Fork, but this location was unsatisfactory to the
inhabitants, and by an act of Assembly, March 31, 1848, proper officers
were appointed to hold an election, at which the voters should determine
between the place fixed and another, on lands of Thomas Price, near the
mouth of Turkey creek.
The
commissioners conducting the election were, Allen McGinnis, of Cabell;
John Brumfield and Crispin S. Stone, of Logan; James McGinnis, of Wayne,
and Joseph Capehart, of Kanawha.
Peytona, in the northern part of
the county, on
Cole
River
, derives its name from William
M. Peyton, who was the first to discover and develop the cannel coal
deposit at that place. He was born in Montgomery county, Virginia, in
1803, and was the eldest son of the eminent jurist, John Howe Peyton and
Agatha, his wife, who was the daughter of William J. Madison, a niece of
James Madison, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Virginia, and of George
Madison, Governor of Kentucky. He was educated at
Princeton and Yale, after which he began the study
of law, which, however, he soon abandoned. He inherited an estate, and
having wedded Sallie, a daughter of Judge Allen Taylor, became a member of
the Virginia Assembly in 1837, to which he was reelected in 1838.
Previously, in
1829, he had been tendered the position of Secretary of Legation to
Paris, and later that of United States
District Attorney for
Western Virginia,
both of which he declined. Interested in internal improvements, he, in
1846-7, explored the western part of the State in search of cannel coal,
and his labors were rewarded by the discovery of it at the place which now
bears his name. He organized a company, and spent a large sum in improving
Cole
River
and in
developing the valuable mineral. He was in
New York City at the breaking out of the Civil War, and being unable to
return to
Virginia by the usual route,
traveled north to
Canada, then west and south, reaching home
by way of
Kentucky
. He died in 1868, and is buried
in Thornrose Cemetery, at Staunton, Virginia, where his half-brother, John
L. Peyton, the author of "The American Crisis" and a " History of Augusta
County," has erected a beautiful cenotaph to his memory'.
[Source:
History of
West Virginia
; By Virgil Anson Lewis; publ. 1887;
Pgs. 687-688;
Transcribed
and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack]
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