Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood
Undated
February 1864

During the discussion yesterday in the Senate, upon the bill to remove the seat of justice of Pocahontas county, the Senator from Pocahontas, Mr. Young, said that Huntersville, the present county seat, which is only three miles from the old State line, was situated in a wilderness. There were only five or six houses in the place, and not another habitation for miles in any direction. He said the place was as desolate as Babylon. The last time he was there the only living animal he saw was a half starve cat. Huntersville, he said, was always a drunken, dirty town, the rallying hole of treason, and in the country around it there was nothing but huckleberry bushes and pitch pine woods, ground that would not fetch buckwheat, barren wastes and precipices inhabited by panthers. The Union soldiers burned part of the town containing rebel stores in 1861, and the rebels afterwards burned the Court House. The wealthy men of Pocahontas have generally cast their fortunes with the rebellion. They have sowed the wind and will reap the border of this State are in a similar condition to that described by the Senator.

Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: Undated: February 1864