Editors' Note
Editors' Note
This year, 2024, is a milestone anniversary year for remembering a number of important events in American and West Virginia history. This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the start of the War on Poverty in Appalachia, along with the fiftieth anniversary of the start of a divisive cultural debate in Kanawha County over school textbooks. And we have just witnessed ten years since the Freedom Industries chemical spill into the Elk River polluted the drinking water of some three hundred thousand West Virginians.
Stepping back further in time, this year also marks the 250th anniversary of a pivotal moment in the state's frontier history, Lord Dunmore's War. Named for the colonial governor of Virginia, the conflict represented a crucial period in a long line of growing tensions between Indigenous peoples, claims by land corporations, and white European settlers. The climax of Dunmore's War was a heated battle in October 1774, where the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers meet, at Point Pleasant.
The articles in this issue seek to reexamine Dunmore's War at an important moment, as the state and nation prepare to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the revolutionary era. Many past historians, both academic and popular, have celebrated this period in western Virginia's history, even claiming Dunmore's War as the "first" battle of the American Revolution. The new scholarship published in this issue reflects on how historians have conceptualized the conflict and challenges us to think more carefully about these narratives.
In the first article, Chris Rizer notes the complicated historical construction of the "first battle" thesis. He illuminates how this understanding emerged well after the Battle of Point Pleasant and represented larger goals in trying to define a distinctly West Virginia identity, especially around the turn of the twentieth century. In the second article, Benjamin Bankhurst further dissects how the wider historical memory of frontier events like Dunmore's War was represented in family histories that often adopted overly positive accounts of white pioneer families. This popular and voluminous genre worked to further lay claim to the land dispossessed from Indigenous peoples.
In our new Echoes from Mountain State History section, we hope to publish interviews, updates, and short essays about current issues in the field of history in the state. But in this issue, building on the articles highlighting [End Page v] on Dunmore's War, Jason Allen provides a lesson plan for social studies educators at the middle and high school levels to help students investigate the claims surrounding the debate about Point Pleasant as the "first battle" of the American Revolution. The documents he selected from the early twentieth century help teachers and students engage in critical historiography, while drawing on the best trends in recent social studies pedagogy.
As always, our review section highlights a diversity of subjects in recent publications on West Virginia and Appalachian history. These reviews highlight thematic topics, such as migration, folklore, and the history of ginseng, along with works centered on particular communities, such as Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. The diversity of topics highlights the vibrant level of scholarship about the history of the state and region. [End Page vi]
