St. Albans Historical Society, WV



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September 13 Meeting:

Our next meeting will Sunday, September 13 at the Historical Society Building. Bring a friend. Program to be announced.

The 10th Annual St. Albans Founder’s Day was held on Saturday, May 9 on Main Street with a theme “Remembering our Past”. The parade started at 10 a.m. and we had a beautiful day with over 40 vendors. The National Guard Obstacle Course was a big hit and all of the entertainment was wonderful. Thanks to everyone who helped !!

Sponsored by the Founder’s Day Committee of the St. Albans Historical Society. We had a large poster/picture of Margaret Bassett on one of the parade vehicles to remember her many years as Chairperson of this event.

Bridge Dedication Books

We still have a few of the “Bridge Dedication” books. $5.00.

Historical Society - 2015 Meetings

All meetings are at the Wm. P. Burdette Memorial Building at 404, 4th Ave. 2:00 p.m. (Regular meetings are on 2nd Sundays unless otherwise stated)

July – August - Morgan’s Kitchen Open

House, Sunday, 2-4 pm

July 11, 2015 - Historical Bldg. Open House,

Saturday, 11-2 pm

August 1, 2015 - Historical Bldg. Open House,

Saturday, 11-2 pm

September 13, 2015 - Regular Meeting

October 10, 2015 - Morgan’s Kitchen Fall

Festival

November 8, 2015 - Regular Meeting

December 5, 2015 - Christmas Historic

Homes Tour, Saturday, 6 - 9 p.m.

Building open on Saturdays: Thanks to Kevin Bragg for opening St. Albans Historical Society building every 1st Saturday this summer !!

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St. Albans

Historical Society

Newsletter - Summer 2015

Picnic: We had a good turnout for our

June 7 Picnic at Morgan’s Kitchen and we also gave some cabin visitors a tour.

Dues:

Your 2015 dues are due at this time. Make a check out and give to Jane Milam. $10.00 individual and $15 for a family.

St. Francis Elem. History Field

Trip

St. Albans Historical Society took the 4th Grade class on a Field Trip on May 7 to Teays Hill Cemetery, the C&O Depot, Wm. Burdette Building and Morgan’s Kitchen.They had a history trivia sheet to fill out during their trip about historical roadside markers and monuments.

Newsletters Indexed

We have indexed all of our Newsletters from 1992 to present and placed in a notebook. So...if you are looking for a certain history topic, you can now view this notebook for your topic and make a copy at the Society Building. Since there are over 200 topics....you can go to our web site under Newsletters” to find the complete index. At: . The notebook is filed in the black bookcase along with our books for sale.

We have also cataloged and indexed all of our Newsletters from the “Coalsmouth Journal”. (1972-1988). These books are filed in the gray bookcase under “Coalsmouth Journals”.

Coalsmouth Journals for sale: We have several extra copies of these old newsletter and they are for sale at our building for $2.00 each.

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Who Was Billy Dunn ? A ltttle Leage Baseball Field was named after this ball player..

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St. Albans Historical Society

Facebook Page

Search for : St. Albans Historical Society.

Visit our web site at:

We have 18 separate pages on this site to include everything from our Calendar of Events, Morgan’s Kitchen, Books for Sale, Founders Day, Pictures, Newsletters, Contact information, etc.

Donation: Jeff Bassitt, Margarett’s nephew, gave us about a dozen old St. Albans High Yearbooks. Mostly from the 1930’s and 1940’s. we will file them with our other yearbooks on the book shelf.

Parkersburg Washington Markers: We recently were e-mailed two historical marker photos in Parkersburg by the Wood County Historical Society. One is about his visit there in 1732 and another for his visit there in 1770. They supposedly had a similar marker like the one at the old St. Albans Jr. High to celebrate his 200th birthday (1732-1932)....but they could not locate it.

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“St. Albans Restoration Project” (continued)

by Albert Sidney Johnson Morgan, a surviving grandson of the early settler.

Once the trailer bearing the rickety structure reaches St. Albans, it will move east along U. S. Route 60 to a site formerly occupied by the Green Tree Garden Center on the south bank of the Kanawha River.

Then the real work commences. Volunteers-drawn from the ranks of the St. Albans Civic Association, the St. Albans Jaycees, and the History Committee of the St. Albans Centennial Commission, will set about the difficult task of restoring the building to its original condition.

The restoration project is being ramrodded by Hallie L. Turley, an employee of FMC Corporation in South Charleston. Turley, a past president of the Kanawha Chapter of tile W. Va. Archeological Society, describes himself as a "lover of history" and a man who dislikes "seeing anything destroyed that could be preserved."

"We're losing things of great historical value every day," he says, "because of so-called 'progress.' Our group is determined to preserve at least a portion of the old Morgan farm for future generations."

The big problem confronting Turley and his associates is that old bugaboo, money. It will cost $800 to move the kitchen house from its present location to the Route 60 site. Even with volunteer labor, it will require another $700 to replace the floor, rebuild the chimney with original brick, and otherwise restore the 18’ x 22’ cabin.

Target date for completion of the project is May 22 (1971). But Turley, far from being shortsighted, is looking beyond the kitchen house job. For some time now, he has been negotiating with Sid Morgan to purchase the contents of Morgan's Museum and move these mementos - lock, stock, and barrel - to the St. Albans site. The museum is a story in itself. Housed in a 16’ x 52’ building that once served as a carriage house, the museum represents a good portion of the lifelong labors of 87-year-old Sid Morgan.

It contains some 1,000 stuffed birds and animals, all but a few of which were killed and mounted by the venerable Sid Morgan during his many hunting expeditions in various parts of West Virginia and throughout the Mississippi River country.

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MORGAN KITCHEN OPEN HOUSE

VOLUNTEERS - 2015

(Sundays from 2 –4 p.m.)

|July 5 |Bill Dean |

|July 12 |Terry & Yvonne Martin |

|July 19 |Hughes & Carolyn Booher |

|July 26 |Bill and Carol Graley |

|August 2 |Coal River Group |

|August 9 |Ellen Mills-Pauley |

|August 16 |Richard & Jane Milam |

|August 23 |Neil Richardson |

|August 30 |Geoff and Grace Bourne |

So...have you seen our sign outside Morgan’s Kitchen this Summer? It states our hours and has a “QR code” that anyone with a smart phone an scan to call up our Web Site and read more about it and see inside photos...especially if we are not open. Try it...

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“St. Albans Restoration Project”

Pathway, Magazine, April 1971

(Saving Morgan’s Kitchen and museum)

St. Albans residents would do well to keep a sharp weather-eye peeled in the direction of Route 17. Any day now, a piece of antebellum history should come rolling down the road from Winfield in neighboring Putnam County.

Sitting atop at low-boy trailer will be a 125-year-old log cabin, which once served as the "kitchen house" for the 600-acre John Morgan estate. The historic cabin was donated to the City of St. Albans

“St. Albans Restoration Project” (continued)

Before pulling out the next morning, the Yanks rounded up all the Morgan livestock and took the animals with them, according to Sid. In his book, The Last Dollar, Sid's father, John Morgan Jr., leaves the impression that the Morgan farm was harassed throughout the remainder of the war by occupying Federal troops.

Following the war, John Morgan, Jr. fought an uphill fight for many years, attempting to rebuild the Morgan farm and to pay off some accumulated debts.

In 1908, an incident occurred which was to exercise great influence over the remainder of Sid’s life, An uncle, Congressman W. O. Atheson, of Missouri, was serving out a term in the nation's capitol under Theodore Roosevelt. The swashbuckling Teddy was preparing to undertake a hunting expedition to Africa and the Presidential party had a few openings for taxidermists. Sid's uncle encouraged the youth to "hurry up" and file an application and he would see what he could do about landing Sid a berth with the expedition. By the time Sid got his application in, it was too late; all positions were filled and T.R. shoved off for Africa without the boy. He mulled around the Morgan farm for a while and finally hit upon an idea. He would launch his own hunting expedition.

With the help of his brothers, he went down to the edge of the Kanawha and started work on a stern-wheel riverboat. As the work progressed, he announced his bold plans to sail the "Red Rover" down the Mississippi to the heart of the Louisiana bayou country. Sid recalled. "They said I'd never make the trip and, if I did, I'd never make it back. It was like going to the end of the world. There were so many knockers, it wasn't funny. Every time I'd go into Poca, they'd kid me about my plans.”

Finally, in 1909, Sid set sail with three other young men aboard. A scoffing crowd came down to the Kanawha to see them off. On board was one of Sid's three brothers.

Today, the Morgan estate has all but disappeared. The remaining acreage in the farm was purchased recently by Appalachian Power Company, for future expansion of the John E. Amos Plant. Sid and his wife, however, will be permitted to live out the remainder of their lives in the old Morgan home before any attempt is made to either move or destroy the historic dwelling.

“St. Albans Restoration Project” (continued)

The collection includes five American bald eagles and one golden eagle, a two-headed calf (with four ears and three eyes), the last elk killed in West Virginia in 1923, several alligators, swordfish, cranes, pelicans, and "just about everything else that walks, swims, or flies" except a snake.

"I've mounted everything but a snake," Sid Morgan said. "I ain't foolin' with any snakes."

Sid Morgan opened his museum in 1926 and has been adding to his inventory ever since. Its value is such that it has attracted the interest of three cities and the State of West Virginia.

About two weeks ago, Sid Morgan reportedly told the Putnam County delegation he was morally obligated to give St. Albans first refusal rights on the coveted museum. If St. Albans can raise the necessary asking price in a hurry, the museum's contents will be transferred to the Route 60 location. If not, they are certain to remain in Putnam County and to end up at Winfield.

It all started in 1846, when John Morgan, Sr. set out from Shenandoah County, Virginia, in a wagon train. In addition to his family, he brought with him 50 slaves, his livestock, and the tools with which to build a house and develop a 600-acre farm.

The family settled a few miles out of Winfield on the banks of the Kanawha River on what is now Route 17. The Morgans’ grew large fields of wheat and corn and raised cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses.

John Morgan, who stood 6' 2" and weighed about 210 pounds, had three sons - James, John Jr., and William. At the outset of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, two of these sons immediately enlisted in the Confederate Army. James served throughout the war as a captain in the cavalry; William was killed in the Battle of Fayetteville in 1862 at the age of 19. John Jr. served as a scout and spy for the Confederacy, spending most of the war passing between opposing lines.

The day before the Battle of Scary Creek on July 16, 1861, Union troops under the command of Gen. Jacob D. Cox arrived in the area in strong force. Large numbers of Yankee troops bivouacked

that night on the Morgan farm while Union officers turned the house into a headquarters.

In recalling the Yankee occupation years later, a Negro slave, who had chosen to remain on with the Morgan’s following the Emancipation, said the entire farm was a sea of blue." The blue-coated Yanks were "thick as flys" and camped everywhere," he said.

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Officers for 2013-2014:

Neil Richardson - President 727-5972

Richard Milam - Vice President 539-5280

Pat McClure - Vice President Fund Raising & Special Events 722-0123

Ellen Mills Pauley - Secretary 757-7189

Jane Milam - Treasurer 549-1902

Neil Richardson - Editor

Website: (18 pages with numerous photos and history)

Carol Graley’s great grandparents: (1-2011)

Just a tidbit from me about a personal history of St. Albans. As I researched my great, great, grandfather from Boone Co. I found him to be in St. Albans for a time with the Union Army recuperating from an injury and ill at the time. His name was Isaac Scott, and was a bugler. I have a photo of him with his gun and bugle, He had 16 children and did not get a pension from the government for many years after the war. He was a coal miner and a very short person, as most Scotts were. I also have a few records of things he checked out to use and a tidbit about him being AWOL for a while

My great grandmother, Mary Francis, married Lorenzo Dow Massey and they also had 16 children with 3 sets of twins and my grandmother was one of the youngest set and had a sister.

St. Albans Historical Society

404 Fourth Ave.

St. Albans, WV 25177

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