A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WEIRTON AREA
Lois Alete Fundis
Mary H. Weir Public Library, Weirton,W.Va.
Indians in the upper Ohio Valley when white people arrive are Delaware, Mingo (an offshoot of the Seneca people), and Shawnee. For the rest of the century, there is trouble between Indians and whites in this frontier area.
Harmon Greathouse is the first white settler on the creek which still bears his name: Harmon's Creek.
John Holliday builds his cabin on a "cove"on Harmon's Creek (near present-day Overbrooke Towers).
Fort Holliday, near Holliday's cabin, sends reinforcements to Fort Henry (Wheeling), besieged by Indians loyal to the British. (This incident is depicted on the mural at the Cove Station Post Office.)
After years of negotiation and surveying, the boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia is at long last settled, creating the Northern Panhandle as we know it. Nearly all of Yohogania County, Virginia (including Pittsburgh), turns out to be in Pa. -- except the Panhandle north of Cross Creek (near the site of modern Follansbee), which is added to Ohio County.
The town of Holliday's Cove is founded.
Iron-smelting furnace on King's Creek built by a Mr. Grant, but later operated by Peter Tarr, reputedly the first such in Virginia west of the Appalachians.
Brooke County created, including the entire northern half of the Panhandle
September 10: The heaviest contribution of what would become Weirton to the War of 1812 may have been cannonballs, made from iron smelted at the Tarr furnace, used at the Battle of Lake Erie.
Hancock County is created after an attempt to move Brooke's county seat from Wellsburg (as it is then spelled) to the more centrally-located Holliday's Cove fails. The new county line is drawn through the middle of Holliday's Cove.
June 20: West Virginia becomes the 35th state in the Union.
Railroad bridge completed, connecting Holliday's Cove to Steubenville.
May 9: Brutal double ax-murder in Holliday's Cove near Cove School, near where railroad (and crossing at Cove Road) is being built. Convicted of killing widow Drusilla McWha and her daughter Eliza Baker is Eliza's husband, teacher Van Buren Baker, who dies seven years later in prison still insisting he didn't do it.
July 2: Market Street Bridge opens to pedestrians, and later to "rigs" (horse-and-buggy as well as the newfangled automotive kind).
Cyrus Ferguson strikes oil in Holliday's Cove.
April: Phillips Sheet and Tin Plate Co. of Clarksburg (Ernest Tener Weir, President) buys 105 acres of apple orchard north of Holliday's Cove from Cyrus Ferguson. By the end of the year, ten mills are operating on the site, and a boomtown called Weirton has begun to grow up near the mills.
Holliday's Cove incorporates.
August 1: On Ernest T. Weir's 43rd birthday, Phillips Sheet and Tin changes its name to Weirton Steel Company.
Like other steel mills and many other industries in the U. S., Weirton suffers from strikes this fall, and anti-Communist sentiment runs high around the country (the "Red Scare"). On October 7, with Weirton Steel's production less than 50% of capacity, 186 alleged radicals are arrested with "half a ton" of "Red" literature and are driven out of town. Other groups attest their loyalty to America, and by the 15th Weirton is back to 100% production while most other mills are still out.
Fort Steuben Bridge completed.
Weirton Daily Times begins when its predecessor, the Leader News decides to publish more often than twice a week. (In March, 1931, a fire will damage the Times building, destroying the back files to that point.)
November: Less than two weeks after the great stock-market crash, National Steel Corporation is formed by the merger of three companies. Weirton Steel receives 50% of National stock and Ernest T. Weir becomes Chairman and chief executive. Headquarters are in Pittsburgh, Weir's hometown. The other parent companies, Michigan Steel and M. A. Hanna, get 25% each of National.
October 19: Less than three weeks before the election, New York State Governor and Democratic Presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks briefly at the corner of Mildren Avenue and West Street, Holliday's Cove, only one block from the later site of the Mary H. Weir Public Library. (Appropriately, the Cove Post Office at that corner was built by the Works Projects Administration during FDR's first term.) He is the first Presidential candidate of either party to campaign-in Hancock County.
Independent Steelworkers Union organized. But the A.F. of L. affiliate Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Plate Workers also wants recognition from Weirton Steel. Strike in late September and early October. Weir rejects Amalgamated -- Weirton workers he has talked to appear satisfied with the ISU -- and work resumes. Amalgamated appeals to National Labor Board, which schedules union election for December. Weir changes election setup to favor ISU, so the government takes Weirton Steel to court. The Supreme Court's decision, February 27, 1935, declares the National Recovery Act of 1933 (a key part of the New Deal) unconstitutional, vindicating Weir.
Weirton Heights incorporates.
Population of Holliday's Cove in 1940 Census is 6,137; of Weirton Heights, 2,476; of unincorporated parts called collectively "Weirton," 9,138; total, 15,275. Unincorporated Weirton reputedly the largest unincorporated place in the U.S.
After the Census is taken, Marland Heights incorporates; thus there is no separate Census figure for that area. It is named for Ernest W. Marland, oil entrepreneur, former Governor of Oklahoma, and former Hancock County resident.
July 1:City of Weirton created by merging incorporated and unincorporated areas of Weirton, Weirton Heights, Marland Heights and Holliday's Cove, after April referendum passes. Thomas C. Millsop, President of Weirton Steel, wins landslide victory as first Mayor; he will be reelected handily in 1951.
April: Population of united city of Weirton 24,005 in U. S. Census.
City Charter approved by voters.
Ernest T Weir donates $450, 000 for a new public library building for the city of Weirton, to be named in honor of his wife. Both Mr. and Mrs. Weir speak at the groundbreaking ceremony March 15.
June 26: Ernest Tener Weir dies at 81 years of age.
June 2: Mary Hayward Weir, widow of Ernest T. Weir, cuts the ribbon opening to the public the library named for her.
April: Population of Weirton in U. S. Census peaks at 28,201.
May 1: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts and candidate for President in the May 10 West Virginia Primary, speaks at the Millsop Community Center, next door to the Mary H. Weir Library.
Weirton's, "Mill of the Future", the Basic Oxygen Plant (BOP), opens.
With over 2,300 employees laid off and production at 60%, Weirton Steel (like the rest of the industry) is hurting. On March 2, National Steel announces that it will no longer invest capital in its Weirton division. A plan evolves to sell Weirton Steel to its workers through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which receives huge community support and wide national attention.
September 23: Weirton Steel union members overwhelmingly vote to approve ESOP; the "new" Weirton Steel Company takes over from National on January 11, 1984.
April: Weirton Steel completes its twenty-first profitable quarter (out of 21 ) and is ranked 268 on the Fortune 500 list of U. S. industrial corporations. But the recession and the need to invest in capital improvements soon lead to losses rather than profits.
April: Population of Weirton is 22,124, only one person less than our traditionally-larger neighbor Steubenville (which came in at 22,125).
After many years of planning, the new, modern Veterans Memorial Bridge opens to traffic.
April Down to 330 on the Fortune 500, Weirton Steel, like several other companies, shows a loss rather than a profit for the last year. But it is still the 8th largest steel producer in the country.
July 19: Fresh from the Democratic National Convention in New York City, Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas and Democratic Presidential candidate, and his running-mate, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, along with West Virginia's Governor Gaston Caperton and Senator Jay Rockefeller, tour the Basic Oxygen Plant and then speak at the Millsop Center, following in the footsteps of FDR and JFK. Afterward, in greeting and shaking hands with the crowd, Clinton actually ventures onto the library's grounds.
These are only some of the highlights (and occasional
lowlights) of Weirton history
to be found in the books, periodicals and other materials at the
MARY H. WEIR PUBLIC LIBRARY
3442 Main Street, Weirton, West Virginia 26062
(304) 797 - 8510
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