Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack]

MORGAN COUNTY.

Morgan County was formed, in 1820, from parts of Hampshire and Berkeley. It was named in honor of General Daniel Morgan of the Revolution.

Bath, then in Berkeley county, was established a town at the Warm Springs in 1776, on land belonging to Thomas Lord Fairfax, Thomas Bryan Martin, Warner Washington, Rev. Charles Mynn Thurston, Robert Rutherford, Thomas Rutherford, Alexander White, Philip Pendleton, Samuel Washington, William Ellzey, Van Swearingen, Thomas Hite, James Edmundson and James Nourse, trustees. The act required the trustees to advertise the lots for sale for three months in the Virginia Gazette.

Felix Grundy was born in a log cabin on Sleepy creek, Morgan—then Berkeley—county in 1777. When but two years of age he removed with his father to Red Stone Old Fort, near the present site of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and the following year to Kentucky. Grundy's first teacher was his mother, from whom he received instruction until he entered Bardstown Academy, after which he studied law under George Nicholas. He was a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of Kentucky, in 1799, and from that time until 1806, served in the Legislature of that State, and was the author of the bill establishing the Circuit Court system there. In 1802, he engaged in a debate with Henry Clay on the subject of banks and banking.

In 1807, He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, and the following year became Chief Justice of the same State. This office he resigned, and in 1808, began the practice of his profession in Nashville, Tennessee. Here he won great renown as a criminal lawyer; of the one hundred and five cases which he defended on criminal indictment but one being executed. He represented Tennessee in the National Congress in 1811, and again in 1813. In 1819, he was a member of the State Legislature, and in 1820, was appointed a commissioner to adjust the difficulty concerning the boundary line between Tennessee and Kentucky. He was elected to the United States Senate, in 1829, for the unexpired term of John H. Eaton, and was again elected to that office in 1832. In 1838, he was appointed Attorney General by President Van Buren, but resigned the office to resume his seat in the Senate, having been elected in the place of Ephraim H. Foster. He was a member of the committee which revised the compromise bill of 1833. When Van Buren and Harrison were nominated for the Presidency, he spoke in favor of the former throughout Tennessee. This was his last political work. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, December 19, 1840, and is buried in the city cemetery at that place.

[Source: History of West Virginia; By Virgil Anson Lewis; publ. 1887; Pgs. 644-645; Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack]