West Virginia County Information

Creation and Naming of West Virginia Counties

Click on a county name in the dropdown list for details
(sorted in order of formation)


West Virginia County Creation and Name Data
IDCountyYear FormedCreation StatuteFormed FromLegislative Petition at Library of VirginiaEponymCounty Name InformationEponym DescriptionEponym Time Relation To County CreationLegislation PassedEffective DateNotes
1Hampshire1754Link to statuteAugusta, FrederickLink to petitionCounty Hampshire, EnglandLink to name informationEnglish county 11/27/17535/1/1753English county famous for its very fat hogs
This county was created by the State of
Virginia
 
CountyWeb Page
HampshireCounty Web Page at WV.gov
2010 Census Data
IDCountyPopulationCounty SeatHousing UnitsTotal Area sq miWater Area sq miLand Area sq miPopulation Density per sq miHousing Units per sq mi
1 Hampshire 23,964Romney13,6886454.3864037.421.4

Links to Maps of WV (Va.) Counties (maps may not display properly on some mobile devices)
Present(Bing)   Present(Google)  1953    1927   1901   1862   1845   1831   1818   1804   1796

  • Eponyms are mentioned in legislation forming seven West Virginia counties.  One county specified its eponym by petition.
  • Five counties were formed after West Virginia became a state in 1863.
  • Most of the links under Creation Statute point to the HathiTrust Digital Libary.  HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
  • Links under Legislative Petitions at Library of Virginia point to digitized legislative petitions by inhabitants of a county/counties for division of a county/counties to form a new county at the Library of Virginia (LVA). The LVA Legislative Petitions web page provides for searches of their hard copy petitions as well as the digitized versions.  The digital legislative petition database is an ongoing project to digitize the petition collection starting alphabetically with Accomack County.
  • Links under County Name Information generally point to Wikipedia pages about the county eponym.