Keyser, West Virginia, the county seat of Mineral County, is located on the North Branch of the Potomac River at its juncture with New Creek in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. The town went through three name changes, ultimately being named after William Keyser, a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad official.
Founding The first Europeans to pass through what would become Keyser are believed to have been William Mayo and George Savage, sent by Lord Fairfax in 1736 to seek out the source of the Potomac River. The first local land grant was issued by Fairfax to Christopher Beelor on March 20, 1752.
The place was first called Paddy Town, for Patrick McCarty, an Irish immigrant who came to what was then Hampshire County, Virginia, sometime after 1740. Eventually, a community developed, which was also known as "the Irish Settlement." Initially a peaceful village, Paddy Town came under repeated attacks by Native Americans after French and Indian forces defeated Major General Edward Braddock west of Paddy Town in 1755. The Paddy Towners built stockades and blockhouses to protect themselves. In 1762, Patrick McCarty was killed by a band of Native Americans while harvesting crops.
Patrick McCarty's son, Edward McCarty, further developed the town after his father's death. Among other things, he built an iron furnace and foundry and a salt well, near present-day Armstrong Street. According to an 1851 newspaper article, during the Revolutionary War, "there were extensive borings for salt at Paddytown, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and that after reaching a depth of 600 feet, the supply of salt water was abundant, from which large quantities of this article was manufactured."
The Paddy Town, Virginia, post office was established on October 30, 1811. The McCarty family built a stone house in 1815, still standing today at Keys Street in Keyser. A travel guide described the town in these formative years:
Paddytown, Va. post office vacant 1835. Is a small, romantic village, 214 miles from Richmond and 135 miles Northwest from Washington. Has 6 dwelling houses, 1 mercantile store, 1 manufacturing flour mill, and in immediate vicinity 1 forge and iron furnace. Romantic scenery, especially Slim Bottom Hill (Queen's Point). Lands in immediate vicinity belong to James Singleton.
As the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O Canal) was constructed alongside the Potomac from Washington, DC, to Cumberland, Maryland, a resident of the Potomac valley wrote to the editors of the National Intelligencer in Washington in 1837, seeking to make a sale:
At a place called Paddy Town, the residence of the late Col. Edward McCarty, on the North branch, 25 miles above Cumberland, stands an excellent furnace and forge, for making iron, now idle for want of capital and skill to work them. These may be said to stand in the great coal region of the Potomack, or so near that the coal can be delivered at them for 3 cents per bushel. Col. McCarty, who built them, and who was a man of great enterprise, failed by attempting too much at once without sufficient skill.
The C&O Canal was originally planned to reach the Ohio River, but the canal never reached Paddy Town, let alone the Ohio. After being overtaken by the railroad, the canal stopped as far west as Cumberland.
By 1844, Paddy Town fell into decline when the original post office closed. The town received an economic boost in 1852 when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in search of a path through the Allegheny mountains, arrived. The Paddy Town post office was re-established that year, with Edward Hitchcock McDonald as postmaster. McDonald's wife, Cornelia Peak McDonald, was an educated socialite from Alexandria, Virginia. She found the name "Paddy Town" to be "unaesthetic and wholly unacceptable." Due to her persistent lobbying, the Post Office Department in 1855 renamed the town's post office as Wind Lea, Virginia. Sometime between 1855 and the start of the Civil War in 1861, however, the townsfolk renamed the village New Creek Station, after the creek that runs by it. This decision was supposedly "by common consent" to give the town a "more dignified" name.
New Creek and the American Civil War In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, the Union established Fort Fuller on the present site of Potomac State College of West Virginia University. At that time, the town was in Hampshire County, Virginia. The fort's commanders included Majors Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and Benjamin Harrison, who would later become the 23rd President of the United States. The area changed hands 14 times during the war due to the importance of the railroad.Swick-Cruse, Deborah "Keyser." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 31 May 2013. Web. 04 April 2017. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1198 One history describes "four years of carnage" at New Creek . . . everything was laid to waste. What buildings of importance had been built, many of which were equal to those of other towns in that day, were razed to the ground or reduced to ashes, by the relentless flames of the military incendiary." The railroad that had been a blessing to the town had turned into a curse, drawing repeated assaults by Confederate forces.
A Harrisonburg, Virginia, newspaper provided a report of the exploits at New Creek of a Confederate company known as the Brook's Gap Rifles, which had been stationed at Romney in the summer of 1861:
A part of the company – 18 members, a detachment under command of Lieut. Philip Kennon – participated in the fight at New Creek Station, heretofore known as Paddytown, on the Balt. & O. Railroad, in Hampshire county. In this skirmish these sharp-shooters did first-rate work, private Black himself killing three of the enemy with his rifle, and private John W. West giving another a load of buckshot in the face. Black, who is a splendid equestrian as well as a "deadshot," charged up on the platform at the Station, riding on 7 or 8 feet. The enemy then drived into a house in which our boys peppered them, killing 5 or 6 with their deadly Minnie Rifles, which they handle with terrible precision.
Because of its geography, a relatively flat plain in a valley surrounded by mountains and open to many approaches, New Creek was an easy target for Confederates. One editor in Wheeling, West Virginia, opined that holding New Creek was useless, writing in 1863:
The concentration of troops at New Creek and the preparations there for attack or siege, indicate that it is the intention of our military authorities to hold that post against rebel investment … New Creek … really protects nothing but the little valley which its guns command. It cannot prevent the progress of the rebels into Pennsylvania or into Western Virginia … We do not undertake to say what points could be made to protect West Virginia or Western Pennsylvania. We only express the opinion, in which we are not alone, that New Creek is not one of them … It is to be hoped the folly of Winchester is not to be repeated at New Creek – of holding a useless and indefensible position, which if not in the enemy's country now could easily be made so by their getting in its rear.
The town was constantly raided by Confederate forces. In January 1864, according to one report, a rebel force of 3,000 cavalry was headed in the direction of New Creek, and New Creek residents "were forbidden to exhibit lights" after dark.
New Creek's defenses were overcome on November 28, 1864, when between 1,500 and 2,000 Confederates defeated a small garrison of Union troops stationed behind earthworks at Fort Fuller. The Confederates then took over the town, destroying the earthworks and nearly all the buildings, except the home of Colonel Edward Armstrong, whom they knew to be a Confederate officer. A smaller Confederate force was then sent to Piedmont, where they managed to burn the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's roundhouse, a workshop, and other machinery before they were turned away by Company A Sixth West Virginia Volunteers.
The residents of New Creek were terrorized by the November 1864 occupation. Men were captured and taken away. One eyewitness complained of the rebels' behavior:
[T]he chief thief among the rebels was a drunken, blear-eyed, pug nosed Major Mason, son of Ex-Senator James M. Mason. This fellow searched and robbed with his own hands eighteen or twenty citizen prisoners, taking everything of value found upon their persons. Although thrice ordered by General Rosser to send his prisoners to the front, he refused to obey until he had finished his pocket picking. After leaving New Creek, the rebels put the prisoners on the double-quick and ran them through the mud for about three miles. When any of the prisoners would attempt to avoid a miry place in the road, which they frequently did, they were rewarded for their care by a slap across the head or shoulders with a sabre. A great many prisoners made their escape along the route. The [rebels] nearly all got stone blind drunk, and they had about as much as they could do to look after the mule's load of booty which each of them carried. They had also lost a great deal of rest previous to the attack on New Creek, and for these reasons the men were not very watchful. That old hero, Abijah Dolly, formerly a member of the Legislature, was one of the prisoners taken from New Creek. He made his escape, ran on ahead of the rebels, reached his farm, and drove off and concealed all his stock before the rebel advance came up.
During the war, in 1863, with the formation of West Virginia, the town found itself in a new state. Likely because this northern half of Hampshire County had stronger pro-Union sentiments and Romney was often occupied by Confederates, the new West Virginia legislature moved the county seat from Romney to Piedmont, a few miles up the Potomac from New Creek, until the war ended. Following the war, the state legislature sent the Hampshire County seat back to Romney and split this northern half away to form Mineral County in 1866. Debate ensued over whether Piedmont or New Creek should be the county seat.
At this time, Confederate Colonel Edward McCarty Armstrong, a New Creek citizen, returned from the war and sold his holdings in and around the town to three Davis brothers from Piedmont: Henry Gassaway Davis, William Davis, and Colonel Thomas B. Davis. The Davis brothers set about making the most of their real estate investment, knowing its value would increase if New Creek became the county seat and a greater hub of activity. They donated a major plot of land to the county court for the construction of a courthouse. The court enthusiastically accepted, and New Creek became Mineral's county seat. Until then, the court met in an abandoned Union army hospital on the river bank. The stone courthouse was completed in 1868, was remodeled in 1896, and stands in use to this day.
Incorporation of Keyser