Was mysterious “lunatic” first to discover what would become W.Va.?

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — One enduring West Virginia legend posits that the first person of European descent to visit the land now within the boundaries of the Mountain State was a “lunatic.”

The late Jim Comstock, publisher of the celebrated West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia, briefly mentioned the tale in his work, though little is known of the event.

“Early histories agree that the first white man to travel west of the Blue Ridge was a lunatic from Winchester who, despite his mental condition, returned and gave an account of rivers flowing westward.”

“He also reported that hunting was good in the country west of the mountains and that there was some fine farmland in the Greenbrier Valley.”

“His journey took place in 1749,” Comstock wrote, “and it was in that same year that the French engineer De Céloron de Blainville planted a leaden plate at the mouth of the Kanawha, claiming for his sovereign all the land drained by that river.”

To establish French claims to the Ohio Valley, De Blainville buried at least six leaden plates at the mouths of major tributaries of the Ohio, including the plate at the mouth of the Kanawha at what’s now Point Pleasant.

“The report given by the ‘lunatic’ influenced Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell to settle at Marlin’s Bottom [now Marlinton] in Pocahontas County, the first permanent settlement in what is now West Virginia,” Comstock wrote.

Comstock, in his 1976 retelling in volume 13, page 2883, of the encyclopedia, neglected to cite a source for the tale or a name for the alleged eccentric, but by his own admission, Comstock knew a good story and never let a lack of a source prevent him from passing a tale along.

Tale of Eckerlin Brothers portrays the struggle for religious freedom

Eckerlin Brothers Settlement at Dunkard Bottom

West Virginia’s history is filled with stories of religious diversity—of hermits, holy men, and women who escaped the clamor and confines of civilization. Beyond the edge of the American frontier, its sheltered valleys promised freedom and isolation in a potential Garden of Eden. That promise was not always fulfilled, as the case of the Eckerline Brothers demonstrates. READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

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